On Revolution

Robespierre, Quantum physics/chemistry, Thomas Jefferson, Saint-Just, & παιδεία (Paideia), NCSU

[valdsbejakande]

Communist historian Doug Enaa Greene lectures on the French communist revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) at the Center for Marxist Education. Gracchus Babeuf was the first modern communist, who was active during the French Revolution of 1789 and sought to push the revolution beyond its bourgeois limits, in doing so Babeuf developed an innovative forms of political organization and approaches to revolutionary agitation.

[letmetastetheearth-blog]

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realise this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (via combeferrescannon)

[lolmythesis]

Live fast, die young. French authors do it well.

French, University of Kansas.

[unspeakablevice-deactivated2024]

"Since Saturday evening I have been eating tarts non-stop. Fate has decreed that my bed should be placed within the chamber that forms the patisserie and so I was very tempted to eat all night long. Luckily I reflected that I should master these passions and finally managed to fall asleep amidst all these seductive items." -Robespierre 

[lolmythesis]

The CIA reclassified many of my primary sources as soon as I requested them.

Diplomatic History, University of Queensland

[lolmythesis]

If Sheryl Sandberg and Tina Fey are your feminist icons, we can't be friends.

History, Reed College

[1055e-37]

A superb paragraph from Middlemarch (The only English novel written for adults. Ha!)

“And how should Dorothea not marry?—a girl so handsome and with such prospects? Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes, and her insistence on regulating life according to notions which might cause a wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles—who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere with political economy and the keeping of saddle-horses: a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

Excerpt From: George Eliot. “Middlemarch.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/dOSzx.l

[treedance]

Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.

Via Vice:

That’s a text message that thousands of Ukrainian protesters spontaneously received on their cell phones today, as a new law prohibiting public demonstrations went into effect. It was the regime’s police force, sending protesters the perfectly dystopian text message to accompany the newly minted, perfectly dystopian legislation.

Via The New York Times:

The government’s opponents said three recent actions had been intended to incite the more radical protesters and sow doubt in the minds of moderates: the passing of laws last week circumscribing the right of public assembly, the blocking of a protest march past the Parliament building on Sunday and the sending of cellphone messages on Tuesday to people standing in the vicinity of the fighting that said, “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”…

…The phrasing of the message, about participating in a “mass disturbance,” echoed language in a new law making it a crime to participate in a protest deemed violent. The law took effect on Tuesday. And protesters were concerned that the government seemed to be using cutting-edge technology from the advertising industry to pinpoint people for political profiling.

(via futurejournalismproject)

[1055e-37]

Just the first stanza.  There’s lots more.

[lolmythesis]

Sometimes governments give indigenous people sovereignty rights, but it's usually by accident.

Politics, Bates College

[fuckkyeahtheoffice]

[lolmythesis]

Medieval knights pretended to be in love with pretty women, but in actual fact were far more interested in impressing other burly dudes in big shiny suits of armour.

English Literature, University of Cambridge.

[mathprofessorquotes]

"I want to give you a, how you say, suggestion. No! Not this word. Command."

Real analysis professor (via mathprofessorquotes)

[1055e-37]

Évariste Galois, for reals hottie & indefatigable revolutionary.   "Ne pleure pas, Alfred ! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans !”

[1055e-37]

Agamben on the oath.

“My hypothesis is that the enigmatic institution, both juridical and religious, that we designate the term oath can only be made intelligible if it is situated within a perspective in which it calls into question the very nature of man as a speaking being and a political animal."

Agamben.  The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath

[historicaltimes]

[bookmania]

Books float on the street after a library on Rue Jacob, Paris is flooded during the Great 1910 Parisian Flood . (via historicaltimes)

[mathprofessorquotes]

You have to learn to respect the uselessness of intuition.

Probability professor (via mathprofessorquotes)