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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html

'The 21st -century Jobsian view asks us to turn inward. It absolves us of any obligation to, or acknowledgment of, the wider world.'

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"Boy babies get blue socks. Girl babies get pink socks. What about purple? What about green? What about orange, yellow, chartreuse, cerulean, black, tie-dyed, buffalo plaid, rainbow…"

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It's the year of the bush – time to rediscover all female body hair

"The capitalist drive to convince us that female body hair is unnatural and unclean has been alarmingly successful. The removal industry is worth millions, and uncountable women are ashamed of and distressed by their post-pubescent hair."

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How did we get from ‘Cookbook for boys and girls’ to awfully gendered cookbooks, separate ones for boys and for girls (excuse me, princesses). I guess making a distinction and making the two (!) genders’ interests presented in completely different ways means more is produced and sold, creating two focus groups to sell stuff to instead of one? 

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Chain Reaction, Ljubljana, October 2013

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The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, October 2013

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Ljubljana, October 2013

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Good vibrations, 2013

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Rosa Luxemburg, 1986, film directed by Margarethe von Trotta

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Blindness - José Saramago

"We failed to put up resistance as we should have done when they first came making demands, Of course, we were afraid and fear isn't always a wise counsellor,"

  "And how are we to know that they are telling the truth /../ We're dealing with honest people, Is that a proverb too, No, that's me saying it, My dear fellow, I don't know about honest but we're certainly hungry."

  "I think we are all going to die, it's just a matter of time, Dying has always been a matter of time, said the doctor,"

  "Necessity is a powerful weapon, my dear, said the woman,"

  "You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives,"

  "Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, I do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see."

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Lisbon, July 2013

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How to talk to your daughter about her body

Maybe you and your daughter both have thick thighs or wide ribcages. It’s easy to hate these non-size zero body parts. Don’t. Tell your daughter that with her legs she can run a marathon if she wants to, and her ribcage is nothing but a carrying case for strong lungs. She can scream and she can sing and she can lift up the world, if she wants.

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tell me I'm a part of history tell me I can have it all

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More from the "Radom stuff in random books" series.

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My favourite quotes from Fahrenheit 451

"What's going on?" Montag had rarely seen that many house lights.

"Oh, just my mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time - did I tell you? - for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're most peculiar."

  He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, her face. Impossible, for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often - he searched for a simile, found one in his work - torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?

  He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

  "I don't think I'd like that," he said.

"You might if you tried."

  "Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything."

"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

  Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors, the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?

  "Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'quilty', but did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there was no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it's too late."

  "Off hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clif where you can't think of anything else but the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in same room where you can't argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest 'What nonsense!'"

  Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.

  The whole culture's shot through. The skeleton needs melting and reshaping. Good God, it isn't as simple as just picking up a book you laid down half a century ago. Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it's a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than 'Mr. Gimmick' and the parlor 'families'? If you can, you'll win your way, Montag. In any event, you're a fool. People are having fun.

  "Maybe they're right, maybe it's best not to face things, to run, have fun. I don't know. I feel guilty-"

"No, you mustn't! If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with the world."

  "But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know which ear you'll listen."

  "When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage."

  "Do you really think they'll listen then?"

"If not, we'll just have to wait. We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can't last."