in extremis

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‘How tech advances can create a new caste system’

Since the dawn of recorded history, the elite have made fantastical truth claims to justify and solidify their privilege at the expense of ‘the masses’. Invariably, these claims are a variation of ‘superiority-otherness’ from the...

“What do Egyptian Pharaohs (3050BC +), Japanese emperors (660BC-1945), Chinese emperors (221BC-1911), Roman emperors (42BC +), Dalai Lamas (1391-Present) and the Inca rulers all have in common?  They were all considered deities, gods, superhuman. We have all heard of European ‘blue-bloods’.

The caste system built a narrative that people were actually different enough, that eating from the same utensils or inter-marrying was going against dharma, the Natural Order of the universe. European racism allowed for the subjugation of whole cultures and continents, leading to global colonialism, indentured labor and – for the truly unfortunate – slavery. North Africa and the Arab world pre-dated the Europeans in enslaving large numbers of Africans using the same logic.”

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Biancoshock

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Anarchism…rests upon the doctrine that no man has a right to control by force the action of any other man. Anarchism is defended on historic grounds: the evils are recited which have been wrought in human history by the employment of force compelling obedience by one will to another will, as they are seen in political and religious despotism, in the subjugation of women, in every form of brigandage from that of the Italian bands to that of the Napoleonic armies. It is conceded that evils might grow out of the abolition of all government; but it is insisted that they would be insignificant in comparison with the wrongs which have been perpetrated on mankind by the authority of government. Anarchism is defended on religious grounds. Jesus Christ is cited as the first of anarchists; for did he not say, “Resist not evil: if one take away thy coat, give him thy cloak also; and if one smite thee upon the one cheek, turn to him the other also?” What is this, we are asked, but a denial of the right to use force even in defense of one’s simplest and plainest rights?

Lyman Abbott

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Blood Command

Ctrl + Art + Delete

Cult Drugs

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Hygienic Dress League

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Jupiter’s Legacy #5

…Mommy hears everything.

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In many ways, schools and universities remain our culture’s most tangible embodiment of public space and collective responsibility. University campuses in particular —with their residences, libraries, green spaces and common standards for open and respectful discourse - play a crucial, if now largely symbolic, role: they are the one place left where young people can see a genuine public life being lived. And however imperfectly we may have protected these institutions in the past, at this point in our history the argument against transforming education into a brand-extension exercise is much the same as the one for national parks and nature reserves: these quasi-sacred spaces remind us that unbranded space is still possible.

Naomi Klein, No Logo

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Michael Pollan, the American food writer and campaigner, says eating together round the table every night is the way children learn best how to get along in the wider world. Interview by Richard Johnson

“We forget how much time it can take simply to avoid cooking: all that time spent driving to restaurants or waiting for our orders, none of which gets counted as ‘food preparation’. And much of the half-hour saved by not cooking is spent watching screens.”

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Silver Surfer: In Thy Name #4 

How very typical of life.

From a distance, even the ugliness has beauty.

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Superman: American Alien #1

When you break something, you’re not just breaking the thing, you’re like…hurting everyone who made it the way it was.

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Jupiter’s Legacy #5

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So forget about whether “the” revolution will ever happen — the best reason to be a revolutionary is simply that it is a better way to live. It offers you a chance to lead a life that matters, gives you a relationship to injustice so you don’t have to deny your own grief and outrage, keeps you conscious of the give and take always going on between individual and institution, self and community, one and all. No institution can offer you freedom — but you can experience it in challenging and reinventing institutions. When school children make up their own words to the songs they are taught, when people show up by the tens of thousands to interfere with a closed-door meeting of expert economists discussing their lives, that’s what they’re up to: rediscovering that self-determination, like power, belongs only to the ones who exercise it.

Crimethinc, Indulge & Undermine

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Metric

Dark Saturday

Art Of Doubt

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Meryl Pataky

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Johnie Thornton

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Bug! The Adventures Of Forager #6

Just as your gift is to overcome insurmountable odds, Kuzuko’s is to see through the dross and impurities of an object and extract what’s pure and good.

Objects and people. She extracted the good from all those heroes you met along your way. She extracted the good from you as well.

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Anarchism is the purity of rebellion. A pig who struggles wildly and rends the air with his cries while he is held to be slaughtered, and a baby who kicks and screams when, wanting warmth and his mother’s breast, he is made to wait in the cold—these are two samples of natural rebellion. Natural rebellion always inspires either deep sympathy and identification with the rebelling creature, or a stiffening of the heart and an activation of aggressive-defensive mechanisms to silence an accusing truth.

Giovanni Baldelli, Social Anarchism