a note on notes and links

asterisks may link to anything (!*) – hover/click on links for destinations

parenthetical DDG bang commands (!?) link to results of searches for phrases they follow

that’s all you need to know – read the rest of this post only if you’d like to know more

may all be well* … and do no harm*

Any DuckDuckGo bang command​​ (!?)* ​ in this post is a link. That is, it has a link embedded in it. There also may be a link embedded in an asterisk​ – as in the second, third, fourth, and last examples below.​

An asterisk may take you anywhere. Hover on it to see where. If nowhere, look for a footnote.

When in parentheses, bang commands link to results of a search for what they follow. When not, they link to results of a search for what they precede. Here are some examples:
!yt Vancouver Unitarians / a bang command for YouTube

!ucv location / a bang command for Vancouver Unitarians (!g)  – !ucv bang command is now history*

Unitarians care less about belief, more about how to live.* / link is to an archived page

paradox: we need to know more than stories can tell, yet … (!?)* / ellipsis may mean a longer search term

“he taught a way of life” / Salzberg, Goenka, Buddha (!?)

power (!* !*) / two searches – each using a faux bang command – with results from each site

!* dismantling religion / UU losing freedom from dogma and hierarchy (!*)

logical fallacies prevalent in UU spaces: ad hominem* (!o) attacks, slippery slope … / Cycleback (!g)*

Each bang command above links to the results of a site search. Hover on the link to see what site.

An exclamation point and an asterisk together make up a faux bang command, one that links to the results of searching a site that may have no custom bang command.

Ellipsis characters used in a search term to signify omitted text may be replaced by that text, as in the last example in the list above. And also as in that example, an asterisk or bang command that could be expected in a search term may be omitted in the actual search.

May all be well.*

George

2020-04-29T09:55−08* / April 29, 2020 – see bit.ly/dateposted
*a link – bang and faux bang commands (!*) in parentheses link to results of searches, such as light a candle (!?)*

you may want to use the simpler line below as a footnote to any of your writing where it applies

*a link – see note

on 2025-01-15 added the line on paradox to the examples in the post

elsewhere the comment following the slash in that line is replaced with “all we know is stories“ (!g)*

on 2025-02-09 added need-to-know block quote as intro to the post

on 2025-02-22 added the line on logical fallacies to the examples in the post and further explained ellipses

on 2025-04-28 added to that line on logical fallacies a bang command to search OneLook and said why the Google search could ignore it
Posted

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

People receiving stimulus checks also get a letter signed by President Donald Trump. /  source

from the Washington Post website:

It will be the first time a president’s name appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one. / source


from the Forbes website:

While wealthy Americans are not eligible for the comparatively measly $1,200 stimulus checks that are now being disbursed to many Americans, they are on pace to do even better. 43,000 taxpayers, who earn more than $1 million annually, are each set to receive a $1.7 million windfall, on average, thanks to a provision buried in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

You may or may not be surprised that some of the language conveniently inserted into the $2.2 trillion bill skews heavily in favor of the wealthy.…

source: archived


Doing the math: $2.2 trillion averages out to around $7,000 for every American, almost six times more than $1,200. A universal basic income, an unconditional basic income for all, a UBI, gets around this systemic inequality.

Two key people on UBI:
Scott Santens (!tw)

Professor Guy Standing (!g)

notes and links

any asterisks or DuckDuckGo bang commands (!?) are links*

Posted

Planet of the Humans


Posted

Stiglitz on the definition of a Great Depression


from an interview posted on the Guardian website, 22 April 2020:
“… people are not going to be spending on anything other than food and that’s the definition of a Great Depression”
—Joseph Stiglitz

quotation source and image credit: archived

“the definition of a Great Depression” (!g)
/ when consumers buy nothing but food, consumer capitalism cannot grow, and when it cannot grow …
Posted

The luckiest man in World War ll (full length documentary)

from an archived obituary:

Alistair Urquhart, who has died aged 97, was a prisoner of the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, surviving both the infamous Death Railway and the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki; his memoir, The Forgotten Highlander, became a bestseller in 2009.

When Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, approximately 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops became prisoners of war. Urquhart took part in a forced march of 18 miles to Selarang Barracks on the Changi peninsula, which became a vast PoW camp. On the way there, the road was lined with the heads of decapitated Chinese on spikes.

Seven months later, he was crammed with 30 others into one of a number of small steel containers used for transporting goods by rail. It was dark, airless and so hot that the steel sides burned any skin that came in contact with them.

…


Posted

Caitlin Johnstone: We are ruled by wizards

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality.

Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastered a mysterious, esoteric art which enabled them to use language in a way that bends reality to their will. They’ve been called wizards, witches, magicians, sorcerers, warlocks or enchanters, and the utterances they speak have been known as spells, magic, incantations, conjurations or enchantments, but the theme is always more or less the same: a member of a small elite group with the ability to voice special utterances which shape reality according to their will in a way that transcends the mundane mechanics of this world.

People have long held a general intuition that language holds a power far beyond what ordinary mortals use it for, especially since the advent of the written word which was long mysterious to all but the most elite classes in a given society. This intuition has been spot on, though perhaps not exactly in the way that ancient mythologies have envisioned.

When I say “Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality,” I’m not making some sort of mystical or otherworldly claim; I’m just making a factual observation about the influence that narrative control has over events big and small which transpire in our world. Many people whose brains lack a healthy empathy center — i.e. sociopaths, psychopaths and other narcissists — already understand this on some level.

Humans are storytelling creatures; everything about our understanding of the world is made up of narratives that are made of language. “My name’s Alice and I was born in Detroit” is a narrative. “The universe is 13.772 billion years old” is a narrative. “If I drink that bottle of bleach I’ll probably die” is a narrative.

Read more »

Posted