construction took 45 years, starting in 1357
video from July 2015 article in Rolling Stone*
from the article:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also disagreed with the controversial Citizens United ruling that opened up campaign spending. She was among the dissenters in the court’s 5-4 decision that erased campaign-spending caps, and called the ruling the “most disappointing” in her 22-year tenure on the court “because of what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office.”
“The rich man in his castle, the poor man …" —Cecil Frances Alexander, All Things Bright and Beautiful*
all we know is stories,
and we are under the spell
of stories we believe
and we are under the spell
of stories we believe
the story of power we are led to believe
is that some people are innately powerful
or powerful by right, the rest of us not
is that some people are innately powerful
or powerful by right, the rest of us not
some people understand power and use it,
and the rest of us don’t; that’s the truth
and the rest of us don’t; that’s the truth
people who use power get what they want
by having the rest of us give it them,
by having the rest of us give it them,
spellbound as we are by what we believe
to break the spell, no one need do more
than need be done to simply be and let be
with choiceless awareness
than need be done to simply be and let be
with choiceless awareness
“Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers,
policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run
the show as they see fit.”
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958*
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958*
“Understanding power and overcoming it through that understanding is the only path to liberation we can take as individuals, as societies, and as a species.”
—Jonathan Cook, 2020*
—Jonathan Cook, 2020*
four insatiable desires: acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power / Bertrand Russell*
“Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.”
—Bertrand Russell, 1950 Nobel Lecture, archived*
—Bertrand Russell, 1950 Nobel Lecture, archived*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer
choiceless awareness (!*) / on this site
choiceless awareness (!*) / on another site
Quebec company taps maple syrup technology to clean water — and it's winning global recognition https://t.co/YZBlAEfpUl pic.twitter.com/SbCVtvX0LM
— Financial Post (@financialpost) October 16, 2020
from the article:
H20’s founder, Frédéric Dugré, got into the water business after being shocked by the Walkerton, Ont., e-coli contamination tragedy that killed six people two decades ago. The then-recent Laval University mechanical engineering graduate said he was facing bleak prospects in the mining industry as bullion prices sank to a 28-year-low.“I thought if it’s not gold, it might be blue gold,” Dugré, 47, recalled by phone in a recent interview. “I heard indeed what happened on the radio about Walkerton and said, ‘Oh my god, how can this happen in Canada?’”
Frédéric Dugré:
I found out that membrane filtration was used to filter and concentrate maple sap. It’s pretty nasty with a lot of sugars, sticky, a lot of organics—bacteria—and I thought: If we can do this, we certainly can do it for surface water and drinking water and filter it.*
/ set zoom to Page Fit to read two-page spread
from Britannica:
The victory of the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War resulted in the proscription of the prayer book under the Commonwealth and Protectorate. After the Restoration (1660) a revision of the prayer book was adopted (1662), which was essentially unchanged. After the Revolution of 1688, a revision of the prayer book was proposed in an attempt to reunite the Puritans with the established church. That proposal failed, however, and further revisions were not attempted until the 20th century. Much controversy resulted from the revision of 1927–28; it was rejected by Parliament, which suspected “Romanizing” tendencies in changes proposed for the ministering of Holy Communion. The Church of England and most of those within the Anglican Communion did, however, develop an experimental liturgy in contemporary language that was widely used; after much controversy it was fully adopted by the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States at the end of the 1970s.*
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; The holy Catholick Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the Life everlasting. Amen.
source: archived*
above version not commonly used since the 1970s; current version:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
source: the Church of England website*
from the OED:
communion of saints: the fellowship or unity of all Christians, both alive and dead; (also occasionally) the fellowship of Christians belonging to a particular church or denomination*
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963)*
Also in 1958, Huxley published Brave New World Revisited. Here is a block quote from the book, with the last paragraph of the book appended:
… by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian* sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.*…
Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.
nothing on these sites* is other than something once thought worth noting
nothing here now intentionally follows a path or suggests you follow one or do
anything other than see for yourself – through self-inquiry – at every moment*
nothing posted is other than thought expressed
what is thought is not what is – except in the mind or by agreement
2020-09-29T15:27−08* / September 29, 2020
*a link – see a note on notes and links, and maybe see also the about post and the archive of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts
image credit: eluoec*
self-inquiry / Ramana Maharshi (!?)
no one is other than form, feeling, perception, thought, and consciousness*
no one is as they are thought to be, nor are they otherwise*
no one need do more more than need be done to be and let be,
to live and let live, and to keep on keeping on with appamāda
!* appamāda / careful, conscious awareness: the opposite of that loss of attention that allows us to be forgetful, carried away, or lost (!?)
*a link – see a note on notes and links, and maybe see also the about post and the archive of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts
image credit: eluoec*
self-inquiry / Ramana Maharshi (!?)
no one is other than form, feeling, perception, thought, and consciousness*
no one is as they are thought to be, nor are they otherwise*
no one need do more more than need be done to be and let be,
to live and let live, and to keep on keeping on with appamāda
!* appamāda / careful, conscious awareness: the opposite of that loss of attention that allows us to be forgetful, carried away, or lost (!?)
a disclaimer – the post with this title at https://t.co/Fc58P6cbXu applies as well to all tweets, retweets, and whatever else shows up here
— George Atherton (@notrehta) December 6, 2020
asking only for appamāda, alertness, being awake to what is, choiceless awareness “at every moment and in all the circumstances of life”*
asking only for appamāda, alertness, being awake to what is, choiceless awareness
“at every moment and in all the circumstances of life” / Aldous Huxley (!?)
last edit: 2022-11-24
/ image from Financial TImes obituary blockquoted below
Debt: The First 5,000 Years was published in 2011, shortly before the encampments in Zuccotti Park took root. This was a disquisition on western political economies after the financial crisis in the guise of a sweeping historical account of the debtor-creditor relationship.The book was also a call to arms. Not long after it was published, Graeber helped to establish a group called Strike Debt, which launched a “rolling jubilee,” buying up hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of medical debt and then abolishing it.Several books followed, including an insider’s account of Occupy Wall Street, a treatise on the scourge of bureaucracy and, most recently, Bullshit Jobs, an analysis of the meaningless work that proliferates in modern economies.*
*a link – see a note on notes and links