“What you can do with a computer is incredible, because you don’t use it like a tool, you use it like a part of yourself.”
Alex Klein
“Today, we’ve been so inculcated with fear and distracted by obligations and consumer junk, we can’t even be bothered to ask why numerous miles of warm, fluorescently lit tunnels under Chancery Lane are laying mothballed while people with no homes freeze to death on the streets above them—forced to sleep in hypothermic conditions by anti-homeless spikes installed on ledges outside shops, luxury flats and offices.” Bradley Garrett regards urban exploration as an apathy killer, spreading stories that help us perceive worlds other than the ones presented to us.
“Wenn Manager ‘Personal abbauen’, nehmen wir es hin. Wenn die Abhängigen für ihre Interessen kämpfen, herrscht Empörung. Der Bahnstreik ist kein Skandal, sondern ein Geschenk.” Jakob Augstein sieht sich durch den gegenwärtigen Bahnstreik an die Macht der Arbeitnehmer erinnert.
“Through their analysis two key factors emerged: having a lower level of education and also high frequency of television viewing were the most consistent predictors of fear.” The Chapman Survey on American Fears included 1500 participants.
“Collective responsibilty without personal freedom or without personal liberty is tyranny, it’s totalitarianism. Conversely, personal freedom and personal liberty without a collective responsibility where we have a shared sense that you are part of society and that you owe it to society to participate fully and to seek utilitarian solutions to society’s problems—that’s just selfish. That’s just bad citizenship. That’s a recipe for a second rate society. [sic]” David Simon speaking at the Observer Ideas festival 2014 in London.
1. “Despite only receiving average ratings and never winning major television awards, The Wire has been described by many critics as one of the greatest TV dramas of all time.”
“Metropolitan police regularly react with a wink and a smile if citizens camp on the street while queuing overnight for the latest iPhone. But to do it in furtherance of democratic expression is absolutely forbidden.” David Graeber points out that the very same press that provides wall-to-wall coverage police repression halfway around the world acts as if analogous events in London are of no interest.
David Graeber has unexpectedly died at the age of 59.
“We must also tackle the scandal of the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines, something they refuse to do because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don’t justify the investment. This is the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework.” Dr John Ashton asks us to respond to the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa as if it took place in Kensington, Chelsea, and Westminster.
Also see Face to face with Ebola, a report by Anja Wolz on working for Médecins sans Frontières in Sierra Leone.
“If even the Governor can’t distinguish between the good and the bad elements of the community and has decided to punish everyone equally, then that should go both ways. I know the police love their ridiculous, unneccessary military equipment. So here’s another patronising test: let’s take it all away from them. And if they can make it through a whole month without killing a single unarmed black man, then, and only then, can they get their fucking toys back!”
John Oliver