ojovivo
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Peter Solarz
Not today Justin
Misplaced Lens Cap
YOU ARE THE REASON
★
blake kathryn
Discoholic 🪩
Product Placement
Origami Around
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pixel skylines
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we're not kids anymore.
AnasAbdin
occasionally subtle
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will byers stan first human second
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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@polarwav
Day 1 of Studying EM
Today I glossed over the mathematical preliminaries involved.
So far- cross and dot products. Gradient, the del operator, divergence, curl. Integral calculus, theorems- green’s and stoke’s, surface integrals. Dirac delta function.
Will edit this post as I progress
this is probably my favorite tiktok of all time and I finally got around to showing it to my dad the other day and now he comes home every day and tells me about all the places he saw crumbling concrete and says "guess they didn't add enough chinchilla flakes"
Makings of a tape out in open source silicon
This is the story of my first tape out in the year 2025. My first tape out has been in gf180mcuD, in which I designed a programmable gain amplifier (PGA) that can be digitally controlled to give a set of gains from 2.5dB to 34dB.
It was the month of June. Scorching heat of Delhi made everything feel so dry. The sun was sucking whatever life was left in the days. The nights would entail me visiting indian classical concerts or jazz quartets in the weekends, and quietly doing my job search and preparation on the weekdays. I was fairly naive and did not have a direction in life. The image of myself was fairly low, I would doubt every decision I made.
I was a student of a famous preparatory institute back then. In the evening when the class was over I would go over to the local mess to eat my food, then walk up to my friend’s apartment and have a cup of coffee. This ensured that I did not fall asleep in the afternoons, and studied for government examinations and filled out applications. There was not much to do, and the faces around me were frankly awaiting the horror that the winters would bring, with the exams coming close.
On one such evening my whatsapp notification rang. I had made a group prior to this solely for sharing my passion of electronics in mind. Someone on the group had spotted a design competition, and IEEE would sponsor the best designs to be taped out. I was enthralled. I was worried. A tape out is an extensive task. But I had to do it, I was too obstinate and worried to show my worth to not. I signed up.
The month of July is when the gaping holes in indian infrastructure begin showing up. It had started to rain, and by mid august we had to submit our designs. I still remember literally wading through the water- sewage and the rain filling up the streets, to be at my friend’s place with my laptop to attend a meeting. I remember waking up at 7 am, going to my classes, coming back at 5 and studying, then from 10 to 3 in the morning next day I would study CMOS technology and design.
Then on one day, it clicked. I had come up with my own method to design an operational amplifier using Early Voltages and gm/Id methods to set up device lengths. I realised a way to set up this op amp. My computer had broken down so I sent my calculations to a teammate. On our first try, the op amp delivered a gain of 26dB. It was designed for 30dB. I was elated. I had designed something of my own. The op amp was the most critical part of our design. My teammate (M) improved some calculations and we reached 30dB. The professors were impressed with our efforts nonetheless.
All we had to do now was to come up with a way to use this gain and modify it. One of my teammates (lets call him K) who was fairly unexperienced was confidently saying the wrong things. And due to his confidence, I had no choice but under pressure to go with his designs. Being the team lead was the hardest during this phase. I would toil all night long on his schemes and he would barely show up. Our first design as a result was rejected, two of my teammates were not showing up and one of them was causing doubts in the minds of my team. His insistence upon his idea and his idea to try and fool the professors, to spice monkey (enter random values for passives until it works) and to not really put in the work was messing me up. Op amps do not just take in any current, and the outputs have a differential gain. He was consistently trying to play down this fact because had we complied with it, our design would look “too easy”. Another friend of mine, V, solely relied on me for everything. Even if I asked him to make a simple slide show, he would ask me to literally dictate everything.
The final day was coming. Our design was not firing up, we were making a fundamental mistake. I referred to an earlier design now and took matters in my own hands. The design was simple but ingenious. The PGA was designed. Some more nights were spent figuring out device physics.
Anyways, we passed this round barely. Next up, the layout phase began. This is when all hell broke loose. Layout is an intricate art. You see- there are hundreds of rules and effects at those tiny lengths that seriously makes it hard to do. One week in, the same two (K and V) people would always ask me to divert the work to the other two people.
I’ve had enough. For the first time in my life I stood my ground and exercised my power to remove them (K and V) from the team. A third guy, we will call him N, who had coasted the design phase was unsure of his own capabilities but here I demonstrated yet again my leadership and asked him to make efforts now. He did not disappoint. Having no experience of layouts, I decided to copy the layout of another guy who was using the same circuit. Problem was, his layout was not scaling to ours and it was giving 2500+ errors.
Right before the day of submission I called my mum. Told her that it was not working, we might not make it. My mom told me to try doing it myself, and so ladies and gentlemen I locked in. I laid out the op amp, the start up circuit, and ran the DRC. All within 5 hours. Lo and behold- 4 errors. My teammate N quickly fixed them. Our design was in. I ran the LVS, it was correct. M had already laid out the resistor ladder and from here on, my teammate N connected the design to the pad frame. He really did most of the boring parts of running DRC to fit resolution again and again.
And so, our design was in, and it has gone in to be taped out. It was not much but by the end of it, I started believing in myself and my leadership qualities. I got valuable experience and really the validation I looked for all my life. You see, the international solids state circuits society validating the achievement of the son of a woman who had done MSc in the same field, then pushed down into oblivion by society is my proof of God watching over. It was one of the hardest things I did. I have developed great levels of patience and an unmatched work ethic. I feel honoured to have lead folks like N and M. I feel honoured to having represented my country at an international competition. I feel eternally grateful for getting to talk to the giants in my field. The feeling that if I work hard enough I can grasp great heights. From being unsuccessful in the JEE, I had lost all faith. I had no validation because I could not clear that godforsaken exam based on cramming. Now I had it. And I am grateful.
I began my year to make a silicon collective in india and tape out chips. Having never done anything like that, and such a thing being frankly unheard of in my country, the dream was outrageous. Now the collective is growing, our success being a testament to it. My dream of having a commons for india insofar our countrymen and women may come together and innovate for self reliance and for the needs of the poor, not for outsourcing and becoming cheap labour, is all within grasp. K has been an active member of the community now, and V has quit the community owing to family obligations. N and M are finishing their colleges. And me? Well as I post this, very soon I will begin my masters in radio frequency very soon.
Thanks for reading!
wewes
Reddit - The heart of the internet
Just letting everyone know that this user is a scammer and if they sent you a message to contact ari levine on discord it is a scam and your account is safe. Many people fall for this, check out the reddit thread I have referenced
Absolutely horrific news and images coming out of El Fasher, Sudan. Since the Rapid Support Forces (a UAE-backed militia) took the area, they have carried out so many mass killings that the bloodstains and bodies are visible in satellite images. Estimates are currently at around 2,000 dead and more expected, and the WHO is reporting that at least 460 people were massacred in the Saudi Maternity Hospital. The RSF's mass killings and displacement in El Fasher are part of an ongoing genocide against Zaghawa, Berti, Fur, and other non-Arab groups in Sudan. Prior to this massacre, El Fasher had endured a year and a half long siege and a resulting famine.
The UAE is the primary supporter of the RSF, but the RSF is also using military vehicles and equipment from Canada and the UK. These countries sell them to the UAE, which supplies them to the RSF. It is essential that we boycott the UAE and pressure the leaders of our nations to stop selling them weapons.
If you can, please donate to organizations that are supporting survivors and providing aid in Sudan. Here are links to donate to the IRC and UNICEF, but I will also be updating soon with more links to local aid organizations. I'm trying to figure out which local aid organizations are still operating right now in El Fasher and the surrounding area—if anyone has information regarding that, please let me know
There are no “skills” honestly give the young a fucking opportunity and they will figure it out they have more higher ed than your entire generation and have grown up around computers.
They keep us unemployed just so that we cannot demand a fair wage.
On the irrelevance of startups trying to “trsin” in VLSI.
Folks, I am an open source lover. I have worked in sky130, gf180, and with numerous people, professors, projects and even taped out my own chip, using entirely open source tools.
Now I might be someone who primarily does analog, but do not be mistaken. I have closely monitored and dipped my feet sufficiently in standard cell characterisation for open PDKs, (look up James Stine) and so I can also talk about VLSI.
Many indian startups claim to “train” students in VLSI (they write “analog VLSI”, which is so cringe honestly. Analog side of the chips do not come under Very Large Scale Integration). You need no one to train you on anything. You are afraid of computers and that is because you like many others are a human. Corporations use this as a selling point, and they use the designs and inputs of real folks like the legendary Tim Edwards and sell them as courses. They call basic examples created by hobbyists as their “IPs” which is a theft. (I will write in detail about IP laws in some other posts).
I genuinely call out VSD and Maven and other such companies for this. You guys genuinely suck.
Open source is for all, as is knowledge.
But how do I learn?
Very simple:
1) make an id on github (send me a hi, I go by the same username)
2) go to iic jku’s site and look at their course. It has ample instructions on how to set up the enviornment. It usually involves cloning locally and then running an executable, which you can access through your docker very easily.
3) look up names like Tim Edwards, or James Stine or Stefan Schippers. You like analog? Go replicate Schipper’s comparator. You like digital? Go to edatools and learn verilog. Do some standard cell characterisation.
4) Follow along IIC-JKU’s course. Make your own op amp! (My first op amp gives a 30dB gain!).
All of this is relevant for complementary MOS only.
What about signal processing and RF? Look up GNURadio.
Quantum and Photonics? There ARE open PDKs (Process Design Kits: contain device info).
If you have any questions ask me!
How meeting friends feels like
When I went to be a part of a real climate change march, it was filled with all kinds of bourgeoisie teenagers and 20 year olds, wearing white reebok shirts with a full sleeve at 5pm and got down from their land rovers and other SUVs, driven to the avenue.
I was on a bicycle, I was wearing a clean and ironed shirt that I had, it was not a bad shirt- but it was not….white. I approached them, they were sitting with banners, and sort of littering too, and yea were profusely sitting around with their “Fridays for Future banners”.
“Are you here in the march” a girl, possibly the organiser, asked.
“Yes”
“You should have worn a white shirt”
“I do not have a white shirt”
“Why? I got mine yesterday. They are inexpensive”
“You got one for today?”
“Yes, you should have gotten one too, now you would stand out differently when we click pictures”
“Oh yea the photos. So what will we speak about today? Industries? Education? Tribals? Who is the speaker? Do you have any pamphlets? Do we march to the governor house? What do you guys want to demand?”
“Woah slow down, we are not going anywhere”
“What?..”
“Yea, and I mean it is the fault of people really..if you look at india, its main problem is not industries, but rather awareness. You see all these poor people do not have a concept of using a dustbin..”
“Just inquisitive, how much do you think littering contributes to climate change?”
“I would say 40%, this stuff gets collected and if everyone litters then it becomes a big problem…and yea you also have people burning coal in their homes, instead of using an electric heater or an LPG stove. Car pollution is also big, but then that is the fault of the government, they could easily remove these encroachers and broaden the roads. The more a car stops, the more it pollutes”.
“I have to go”.
This was a real conversation. It is just pathetic how deluded these idiots are. Most of them hijack platforms to get lofty resumes, just in order to pursue a degree in UK of Canada. None of them care.
So if you are serious activist, ask everyone who chimes in basic questions and your actions should be a bit disconcerting to the law makers. That weeds out the morons who are on the side of the law makers from hijacking your protest.
I did the history search and Prager U’s funding comes from oil billionaires. It is not a real university and Dennis Prager is not an expert on any topic whatsoever. He just spits out whatever daddy money stuffs his fowl ass with.
and yet he's still trapped. what did he gain
His dignity
From India, with Love: contemplations on love (an anarchist’s view)
It is not a debatable topic at all when we say that love does not exist in India. It does not exist in the slums of Mumbai, it does not exist in the rural areas of Bihar, the jungles of Chattisgarh, the posh neighbourhoods of New Delhi, and so on and so forth. Love is absolutely absent from India.
You quite rightly might think that you do know certain examples of couples in love but left to those very couples, is it likely that their younger relatives will also have support from them in their love lives? In many cases, there is dowry in love marriages, if at all there isn’t honour killing. Marriages in India are a testament to the fact that even though most indian youngsters do have their moments of exchanging smiles and glances and possible risqué dates very much in the fashion of Romeo and Juliet, the very youngsters never marry outside their caste. 96% marriages are intra caste, which either means that a) there is something fundamentally wrong with the youngsters themselves or b) love does not exist in India. It is all a mere show, a hypocritical display. I will give a very personal account of my evolving views since childhood that lead me to the conclusion that Indian society is fundamentally unfree and therefore love, like language, when controlled becomes a tool of mass oppression. I can post studies and numbers, but that do not do service to understanding what actually goes on.
Chapter I: the Epiphany
What does (b) even mean? Well it means very simply that the society is very anti love. In India you can very easily take a leak in public, but you cannot hold hands. I remember when I was growing up, as boys we had no sort of training or exposure on how to view women. Till the age of 20 I had not made a single conversation with a real girl my age. They were mythical creatures to me. I barely only saw a few girls, as would my classmates when we passed by a girls’ school nearby and during that time there would be utter and complete silence in the van that carried us home.
It was not very unusual to exchange pen drives full of pornography amongst teenagers, who often described ghastly acts they would do to other girls and possibly their girlfriends during my school time. Soon enough porn took over all of their sexuality. From age 13 onwards all women were basically either a subject of our harrowing myth or related to us. There was no in between.
I remember being utterly taken aback on watching porn for the first time, I frankly was so surprised at the visual that I almost went into shock. I was 12 then. I remember an elder walked into the room and I came out of my delirium then. Yea I almost got caught. I was so stressed, the women seemed to be in mental and physical anguish. I had no idea, neither did any of my friends. However, my classmates enjoyed it. They enjoyed reading about rape in the newspaper, not because the condoned it but because they found immense pleasure in realising that sex after all is as terrible an impulse as they saw in the videos, and nobody knew anything about consent. I confided in my mother, she counselled me well. She did not tell me about consent still, but she told me that I will have to stay away from such profanity and channel my energy into something useful, although she did mention that sexuality in itself is not wrong. I did not know better, I took it very academically. Sex was a sacred chord that was tied to procreation.
“Women do not like it”, I thought, and “men are beastly creatures who survive to dominate women into performing the act. Women accept the least worst subjugation in the worst case to merely procreate”.
I feel from 12 onwards, I wanted to read about feminism, philosophy. I was utterly repulsed by the thought of intimacy and relationships. They were a chain of domination to me.
The Nirbhaya case had shaken me, the blaming of the victim by men around me, and so did the attitudes of my classmates and relatives towards women. However there were no grades for being sensitive towards it, all I got were scoldings and disgust for even inquiring what the words meant. The topics of sexual organs were to be neatly crossed out with a pencil. God forbid a woman was our Biology teacher. Boys and men around me spared no one from their rapist myth they called “sexuality”.
As I grew up, I had the chance to attend extra classes to prepare for JEE. The girls always sat segregated, they murmured and I faintly remember hearing them speak. I never dared to talk to one. Neither did any of my classmates. Two years passed in those classes.
I grew depressed and sad due to this lack of freedom and any real friendship. The absence of 50% of humanity from one’s life does affect it’s quality which is not completely due to sexual frustration. I had no male or female friends. I saw the world as this great royal rumble where men fought each other to brainwash women into consenting. I did come to know that women do consent voluntarily, but I could not believe it. Frankly, because I still saw sex equivalent to pain and suffering for women, and also because I knew no one who would ever say otherwise to me. I was an ugly, under confident child, and frankly familial patriarchy and sheer disgust towards any expression that was remotely mine made me completely confident of my beliefs. I wanted to fight the suffering of women. I wanted to eradicate porn and cyberbullying.
Two girls did approach me in my childhood to be friends, but conscious of the fact that I was a man, I relieved them of my friendship. I did not and could not face it that I too wanted to be friends, because I hated what it meant to me personally.
Unconsciously, I still did not see women as equals, I pedestalised them into a part of humanity that is always the victim. I became a part of the problem. You know the torture of the evil is more digestible than the torture of the righteous, for the simple reason that the torture of the righteous is two fold.
I began engineering. Segregated classrooms. Refusal to talk to women. I soon enough enrolled for military, I wanted to join the NSG. I wanted to rescue women and children. In the solitude of the selection process and the long runs I realised that perhaps I could do activism. I realised I should work on a cultural revolution. I opted out of the highly competitive NDA exam right before they would announce the results in the interview round. The scores came in, had I said yes, I would have been in the military. I could not turn away from my goals now.
I started going to slums, distributing sanitary pads. In doing so I made friends with girls. It felt different. I had no romantic interest, but in hanging out with them I realised something at the level of Mary’s apple. That women were human beings.
They liked to smoke, they wanted to date, they liked the same things I liked, they had goals and dreams. They were restricted, although arguably my upbringing was way more restrictive but they were not very different.
I did a lot. I am proud of my actions, it lead to lasting friendships. I would ironically also say I made my first lasting friendship with a girl. I eased a bit, I got into a relationship and did all I can for the girl. However, my putting women on a pedestal had not gone.
Chapter II: the Heartbreak
My ex girlfriend was how she was but for what it’s worth I am not here to whine about her. She ghosted me, and it was because of her new found freedom in a city far away from her house.
I realised something profound from this experience. Women have to sacrifice a lot of autonomy by merely existing. They are expected to suddenly be extremely free and corporate style confident, which is a huge jump. She went to that city and her peers expected her to be a certain way. Now she could either have me, or her freedom, as she thought. I represented to her the captivity of her past. I was to be abandoned. She did so, it caused me pain admittedly. She came to apologise two years later, her guilty conscious was not allowing her to live a fulfilling life.
However, I will say I allowed my own abandonment, in fact, I facilitated it. No I am not over philosophising. I wanted her to be free, without ever wanting freedom myself. I wished for a ritual, I became the sacrifice. I do not think that could qualify as love, because if love is a union my pain should matter too. Meaning thereby I should not have tolerated the sheer disrespect and voluntarily exited the relationship when she was becoming toxic to me. However my own inability to know that I am the union and not merely its support meant a relationship of only giving, and never receiving. I accepted that perhaps in reality, I was paying the debt on behalf of all the men. I was so drained, it still felt that I am in her way. I did not see my pain as an equal pain, and putting oneself below someone else is another kind of control.
Men see themselves as providers to women, without women ever desiring it. This takes the form of either extreme relinquish of control or extreme seizure of control. Love should not be in terms of a provision and reception. Love should be uniform. To accept any other form of a union is not love. Love should change how one feels about themselves, it should be like a prism that splits light. Love should be equal and unequal. To define its equality is a way to contain it, hence control it. A man must think “I try to do equally as much but what she gives me is far more than what I give her”. Love therefore is a game of hide and seek. Both people in love try to catch up to the other and this becomes the best way for them to self actualise. Love is the most liberating of all feelings thus.
In India, workers have no certainty. Jobs often coincide with break ups, and divorces these days as offices form little “families”, all filled with men, who grew up with masculinity equalling domination in their minds and women, who have no idea what freedom means. These men expect women to be a certain way and this creates rifts massive enough to rip ties apart.
Wild lions and caged lionesses are left together to work in this sanctuary where they must survive. The lionesses begin following the lions. They become institutionalised. The very peer group that meant freedom now puts them in captivity. The corporate structure in fact is the jungle, uncertainty all over. (I am sort of proud I came up with that comparison)
Chapter III: The couple
My cousin sister loves a guy that organises metal concerts. He is sort of the perfect guy for my sister. I love him, he is very caring and sensitive. However her parents won’t agree. Caste, family, net worth et cetera et cetera.
In India, when I say there is no love, it does not mean people cannot love. It means a sinister society, that does not want love. They grow so institutionalised and repulsed by love, it is no longer a question of feelings for them. It is a matter of honour. Indian parents do not want the best for their child. They envy their child. The child represents to them freedom and sensitivity, they put it in captivity and throw it as cannon fodder to ideology. God forbid my sister decides to spend her own money. In no time will it become about honour. A fully functioning adult has to keep up with this code of respect.
Parents terrorise boys and girls to break up, then proceed to slut shame them. Parents never really grant their children freedom, so to speak. You constantly have to strive to “restore their honour” by everything you do. They do not leave your soul until they die. You have to kill your curiosity, your visions, your originality, your love life, everything, for the sake of their honour. An increasing number of families do not observe the hindu mourning period of 1 year now.
And so we see a nation where 67% respondents want to get rid of their parents, where streets of Mathura are filled with old widows awaiting death, where old age homes are filled up to the brim. Tired of honour, children routinely try to fight for freedom, and this becomes the struggle of Macbeth and his wife against the prophecies of the three witches. They come to haunt, and then the deed is done. The arranged couple avenges the death of their possibilities.
I had to speak up in my household. Males in my family can no longer bash women. I fought and fought. I won. But that too is because I am a grown man now. I will fight for my sister too.
Chapter IV: Mirror of reality
In India, live in, inter caste, inter religion and homosexual relationships, and most freedoms won for the cause of love are again under threat. The youth lie displaced and do not vote. The old people vote for the least useful and the most casteist parties possible. Democracy in India, especially since the hindutva BJP is in power has become a clown show. The institutions are rigged to the core. I do not think I need to expand this any further. I will conclude now. The reader now understands why I say there is no love, it is because our culture is insanely divided and subjugating. Where there is no freedom, there cannot be love. Love in essence is expression in freedom. Like language, the containment of love is a way to sieze power. The ruling elite have done all they can so that the corrupt system of marriages, dowry, caste division and honour killings do not stop. They are now coming up with elaborate laws that are supposed to “guard” their culture. What culture? The sub continent of India has a thousand different peoples and cultures, again what culture? They have made it easy for billionaires and the young people have no job security any longer.
What is to be done? Anarchism is the politics of direct action. Here is what you can do.
Talk about love marriages with your friends and younger people. Educate young boys about love and sex.
Open up dialogue with your parents and younger siblings about love and sexuality.
Open dialogue again if they recoil. And again. And again. Keep resisting. Get all the young people in your family under your banner. Then again.
If you are a professional, form co-ops and share your knowledge. Develop scalable co-ops, redistribute the surplus and secure an emergency fund for the families of your fellow workers. Stand for them. Fight capitalist oppression. Boycott companies, engage in mutual aid.
The praxis of anarchism is the praxis of love. And to be able to love means to be able to be free.
Until we do not resist this bs actively, expect no love to exist.
Resist!
Why India needs Anarchism
Anarchism is a philosophy of direct action. India always had local self governance and direct democracy, in the form of panchayats. Mutual aid has always been a part of the Indian consciousness. But all that is basically a fossilised version of the indian, a digression. I will tell you why we REALLY need anarchism.
Firstly, UPSC, JEE, NEET and the Bureaucrats are colonial legacy
Competitive exams basically throw bodies at the problem of governance poverty and education. Even after JEE Advanced being the hardest exam, the IITs do not rank anywhere in research. Contrarily, TIFR, ICTS, IISc, ISI, RRI- institutes that do NOT take in through JEE or even if they do, they take in very less are actually pretty well known worldwide. Why? You may ask. If you really do want to know we can discuss it later on.
The IAS babu system compels and facilitates corruption as they basically are in place so that the mobs do not go berserk full french revolution mode. I mean, the Brits had ICS for this very reason. Civil servants were always against the independence movement, and the police and the babus have only ever worked to benefit the political upper class, who rarely ever change. In 525 people in the lower house, basically no one is there that is not a result of nepotism. Same is true for local assemblies. You are further removed from politics because if you work for the government you cannot have any political affiliation and if you are anyone else, your company can indiscriminately fire you for being “political”. Why? Because the IAS are the DE FACTO CHAIRMAN OF YOUR COMPANY. The IAS also come up with brain dead policies because they have no idea about the ground reality. So is the case with the Courts, where time and time again people of backward castes are harassed. Therefore your protest and movement will have no participants unless you are the political elite.
I say if you are an anarchist, instead of protesting, which will play into the hands of the ruling state, take it in your own hands. Educate children, do not take the NGO route, find mutual aid. If you are a doctor, or a nurse, educate people in first aid, help them set up their own clinics for primary care. Look up doctors who work in goodwill, improve their access and help them reach you. If you are an engineer, go to farmers, go to different people. Understand their problems, start co-ops to deal with the problem, contribute to open source! See how can you take your knowledge to the people. Gather artisans, cooks, experts, etc. Set up a little gym for youth in backward communities, train them martially to RESIST police and caste oppression! Thousand different ways to achieve this.
Learn from the example of Gandhian Khadi or Swadeshi movement, the Mondragon coop in spain, read about EZLN and Catalonia, read about Rojava. Read Bookchin, Malatesta. Follow the example of Dr Verghese Kurien!
Let not anarchism be a mere talking point. Let it mean action!
Aliens and the Other
I am sort of noticing a phenomenon in sci fi movies other than the misogyny and the goober science (no problem with the goober science though)
It is that ever noticed that how alien species explain their “culture” to the white protagonist? As in star trek, vulcans have a particular “culture” that Vulcans follow, Orville’s crew having an alien taking them to watch him pee, in Guardians of the Galaxy different aliens (all different species altogether by the way) having a unitary single culture specific to the entire species. The cultures are often very out of the ordinary, meant to garner laughs, very ritualistic as if they come from the middle ages.
Think about it, how is it possible that an entire planet full of a species intelligent enough to build big spaceships and guns not have any diversity in language or culture? How would they not have any different phenotypes within the species? Why do they all dress the same? Why do they lack corporations, and only have imperial forces instead of any other form of government with one king over the ENTIRE species. Why can’t they conduct business? Why does the entire specie have the same food preference?
I find this so moronic, but this altogether is nothing but a symptom of the phenomenon of the other, that there is one human culture on Earth, the western American culture, American food et cetera. The other peoples of the Earth are not really people, they are like the Aliens stuck in a time capsule of american consciousness. The other peoples thus will never be complete people, and I mean all these movies prove is how heavily humans are indoctrinated into “American exceptionalism”, and America “represents” humanity.
This legitimises the imperial practises of America, the globalist fascism that they are carrying out all OVER the world including my country. A huge brunt of this is faced by the people where America bombs, the alien Palestinian or the Iraqi or the Somalian or the Laotian or.. well there are over 83 examples (good book reccs on this are Killing hope, Jakarta Method, Orientalism and Against Empire).
That said this article is mainly to deprogram the reader in a sense. If you are a writer, you can replace “in my planet” with “where I am from in my planet” and bingo you are no longer writing propaganda.
the thing about capitalism is that at a certain point a product reaches its maximum audience and cant really be improved (at least not while remaining profitable), but capitalism requires a product provide infinite growth, and at that point the only way to increase profits is to raise prices, cut corners, and in the case of services start adding advertisements. this is just how the system works.
Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.[1] Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality,[2][3] risk of growing political bribery, and potential national decline.
The actual economic term for this parasitic behavior is "Rent Seeking", as in "charging you rent for things that didn't used to cost money just because we can."
"The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a property owner who installs a chain across a river that flows through their land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector, nor do passing boats get anything in return. The owner has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for themselves. All they are doing is finding a way to obtain money from something that used to be free." obtain money links to the wikipedia article for Parasitism which might be the most brutal diss I've ever seen on wikipedia ever
Hey, that's unfair, parasites at least play an important role in the ecosystem
Parasitics are important in electronics too!
Some reflections on education
I have been a teacher, not as a source of employment but out of a genuine interest of sharing my knowledge. Resultantly, I have taught many children, ages 9-14 (sometimes even toddlers) the subjects of mathematics, english and important stuff they need to know as they were growing up.
Now much of these kids were not from well to do families, meaning thereby, that they lived beside railway tracks with less or no access to toilets, with generational poverty that caused many of them to grow up in an enviornment that lacked privacy and security. I can nonetheless proudly assert that I have been directly responsible for the education of over 40 children and the literacy program, carried out by me and some friends is responsible for the literacy of the slum. I believe my learnings in the field of being a teacher are something that can be useful if you are a teacher, or even a parent or a friend tasked with teaching, or someone who wants to teach themselves something.
Lesson 1. Homework holds back the quality of education
Homework is the first thing that causes inequality in a country. Many kids have good parents, who can afford them tuitions or help them solve simple mathematics problems or write for them an essay. My children, did not have that privilege. They had to work full time jobs in shops doing manual labor, after which they cannot be expected to do anything worthwhile. The challenge for me first hand was to teach these kids mathematics english and hindi such that they could be admitted into a government school in a grade they did not feel was below their age group. This had to be accomplished in 40 hours. Now 40 hours is a long enough time if you think about it, if you expect the students to work out the material.
I would make the class so exciting that they would think about it when they were gone to do their daily chores. I would ask them to spot 5 square numbers throughout their day. They would tell me addresses, would write them down and bring them to me. I would ask them to not study but to play. Children should play, it is important for development. I would buy them cereals and make them read the labels. One of my students, got so good at calculating squares that she overtook me. I would show these children why studying what they are studying is useful. I was studying electrical engineering, so the children would often inquire about trains, and shoot questions of all sorts at me. I would answer all of them. Result of this education as a way of life resulted in many of them not only going to school but doing well enough that their parents got educational confidence
Lesson 2: Children should be respected
I would often ask children for their opinions on matters. Often they would include my efforts to talk to the government officials. The children were intelligent, they would become my friends and learn to engage in dialogue, process emotions, even insults. I can say shouting “silence!” in the class is not the way to go. Children form a group in school, where they outnumber the adults and try to challenge authority. This trait needs to be channelised, not discouraged. The classroom is the first place where socialisation begins.
Lesson 3: Explain yourself
You are older. I get it. But explain yourself. Why do you think something is important. Why did you say a certain thing. Explain. Children are human beings, treat them as such.
Lesson 4: Curiosity should be the most important result of primary education.
If you are a teacher and the children end up not understanding the aesthetic value of your subject but hating it, then you are at fault. It is YOUR JOB as a teacher.
I think that these four lessons are abundantly obvious, however, I took my time to type it out insofar teachers parents and activists can reflect upon them.
