Bertolt Brecht, “On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.”
[image is text of a poem:
(for Walter Benjamin)
I am told that you raised your hand against yourself Anticipating the butcher. After eight years of exile, observing the rise of the enemy Then at last, brought up against an impassable frontier You passed, they say, a passable one.
Empires collapse. Gang leaders are strutting about like statesmen. The peoples Can no longer be seen under all those armaments.
So the future lies in darkness and the forces of right Are weak. All this was plain to you When you destroyed a torturable body.]
“We tend to think of censorship as aiming to destroy information that already exists. But when we observe the real behaviors of bodies like the Inquisition, they rarely attempt that—focusing instead on labeling or policing information, trying to control who accesses what, and on spreading fear of their authority. If we look at the condemnation of Galileo, it was only a “failure” if we presume the goal was to silence Galileo’s ideas. The condemnation also frightened Descartes into not publishing a newly-completed radical treatise, which he then revised heavily to be much more orthodox and Catholic. The condemnation “succeeded” in preventing the publication of Descartes’s ideas, and those of numerous others who decided to self-censor out of fear. This led to one of the project’s conclusions: the majority of censorship is self-censorship, but the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by a censoring authority.”
[picture of a page with text reading: A farmer came home suddenly from town and found one of his hands kissing his wife. The hand let go and began packing up to leave. “Where you goin’?” inquired the farmer. “Back to town, I suppose. Guess you don’ want me around after what happened.” “Don’t you worry about that, Ed,” said the farmer vehemently. “We’ll both love her, and by golly, if we can’t love her enough, I’ll hire another man.”]
we have to put you in the hourglass again im sorry we all had a meeting about it and we decided we hate you and you are going to be put in an hourglass
hey so your jaytim art has given me permanent brain worms and i love all of your comics - i was wondering if you have any fic recs of them? thank you!!
[image is black-and-white collage art of a huge mushroom cloud of dust in the background with two indistinct stripes of grey and black in the foreground (possibly with a little fragmented arm bone or something? bad resolution sorry). Cut-out text is pasted over the mushroom cloud reading “Your manias become science.”]
[images are a set of screenshots of text. 1: from the Wikipedia article for Palamedes (romance). “Palamedes is a 13th-century Old Friend Arthurian prose chivalric romance. Named for King Arthur’s knight Palamedes, it is set in the time before the rise of Arthur, and relates the exploits of the parents of various Arthurian heroes. The work was very popular, but now exists largely in fragmentary form.” (the last phrase is highlighted in the screenshot.)
2: “Dares the Phrygian, Palamedes was illustrated as ”… tall and slender, wise, magnanimous, and charming.“
3: Meaning & History: Possibly derived from Greek πάλαι (palai) "long ago, in days of yore” and μῆδος (mêdos) “plans, schemes” (itself from the verb μηδομαι (medomai) “to think, to plan”). In Greek…
4: “No, I mean he deliberately fixed his soul to his body, with spirit magic,” said the cavalier. “We planned for it. In the event of his death. I know he did it, because I got the message. I only want to make sure I snagged the right part of his skull. We didn’t account for—pieces. If he’s not in here I have to go find the others.” (two phrases are highlighted: ‘we planned for it’ and 'we didn’t account for pieces’)]
the ideal GM/player dynamic is when one side says “here are some problems i caused” and the other says “thank you so much! i will make these worse” back and forth forever
[image is text reading: When he says, This light heavy, what he really means is, The sun is in my breath, each inhale a swallowed flame in my chest. Since I’ve come back, there’s been less of me.]
really this calendar bit of 17776 like. one of the best openings of any scifi story i have read. feeling emotions about ut.
[image is a screenshot of 17776 with text in green and red on a background of a calendar grid. Green: “Nine. I am so sorry. I can only transmit short messages. I need to preserve power and so do you. Listen very carefully. It takes 217 days for my message to reach you, and it takes another 217 for your response to reach me. Call me Ten in your message so that I know you’re responding to me. More will follow. I love you so much.”
Red: “You said to call you Ten. Who are you? Why does it take so long? I don’t understand what is going on. I don’t know who I am or where I am. I’m all by myself. Who are you? I love you too.”]
Guys I am begging you please read Brennan Lee Mulligan’s story about the Insane Christmas Party. He does not even BEGIN to describe it in the Fireside Chat.
okay here’s the random question of the day. what specific word or phrase in your vocabulary is a dead giveaway for the local or regional dialect from where you grew up? like for me it’s saying “chonies” instead of underpants. that’s just very southern san joaquin valley/maybe southern california in general, but like, VERY southern valley
call me sk! I am here at all because of ps. <3
Please send me an ask (anon is on) if you'd like me to tag for something or if you'd like to chat about anything!
Into: Terra Ignota, Murderbot Diaries, Hikaru no Go, Les Mis, music, things that distract me from [waves hand at the world]
Anonymous
