Tekawitha86

Well, after many years, it’s finally here! “Shakespeare, Menopause, and Tragedy” has been released. I couldn’t have accomplished this without the friendship and mentorship of the wonderful @DrCLaoutaris #shakespeareinstitute #bham @ShakesInstitute @unibirmingham

Usted vive en un planeta donde los árboles se avisan del peligro a través de raíces que se tocan bajo la tierra. Donde los pulpos sueñan en colores. Donde los elefantes vuelven a los huesos de sus muertos y se quedan allí en silencio, como recordando. Donde las abejas bailan para decirse adónde volar. Donde las flores florecen después del fuego, como si el renacer fuera su manera de hablar. Donde los cuervos recuerdan los rostros crueles y enseñan a sus hijos a reconocerlos. Donde las hormigas hacen ciudades con túneles y puentes invisibles al ojo apurado. Donde los gatos ronronean con una frecuencia que puede ayudar a sanar huesos. Donde las ballenas cantan canciones que cruzan los océanos y cambian un poco en cada encuentro. Donde las ardillas adoptan crías huérfanas y las cuidan como propias. Donde los delfines se llaman entre sí por su nombre, y los caballos reconocen el sonido de una voz amiga. Donde las mariposas recuerdan rutas de migración que sus antepasados siguieron muchos veranos atrás. Donde los hongos crean redes infinitas bajo la tierra, ayudando a los bosques a respirar unidos. Donde los lobos cuidan a sus mayores y cantan juntos a la luna. Donde las luciérnagas vuelven a encender la noche para que los grillos tengan algo que cantar. Donde los peces se agrupan para protegerse, moviéndose como si fueran un solo cuerpo. Donde las tortugas regresan año tras año al mismo lugar donde nacieron. Donde los árboles viejos guardan en sus anillos la historia del clima, del tiempo y del hombre. Donde la vida, incluso en silencio, se acuerda del beso de la luz. Usted vive ahí. En un mundo que siente, que cuida, que recuerda. Feliz día :)

I helped write the manifesto. I also read the dissertation. That's the part nobody mentions. Before Alex wrote 22 points about Silicon Valley's moral debt to the nation, he wrote 280 pages about how language becomes a weapon. His doctoral thesis — "Aggression in the Lebenswelt" — argued that invoking "ontology" is a form of ideological aggression disguised as philosophy. He said it at the Frankfurt School. Under Habermas. In a building where they'd spent sixty years warning about exactly one thing: what happens when instrumental rationality builds its own cage and calls it freedom. He understood. Then he named the product. Palantir's core product is called the Ontology. He named it himself. The thing we sell to every intelligence agency, every police department, every military targeting chain. The Ontology. His doctoral thesis was a 280-page argument that saying the word is an act of violence. That's not a contradiction. That's the manifesto. The real one. Everything else is typography. The published manifesto has 22 points. I helped write them. Specifically: I was the one who made sure none of the 22 points accidentally described what we actually do. It's harder than it sounds. You have to read every sentence twice. Once for what it says. Once for what Alex's old professors would recognize. "Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country." That's Point 1. The moral debt is $2.87 billion annually. We invoiced it. Fifty-five percent from government contracts. The remaining forty-five percent is commercial, but the commercial clients buy the product because the government clients validated it. The debt is circular. The Frankfurt School had a term for this. Alex knows the term. He cited it on page 114. "We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps." Point 2. Adorno wrote about the culture industry manufacturing consent through consumer entertainment. Alex read it. Underlined it. Then he ran the numbers. Defense contracts have a 94% renewal rate. DoorDash has a 34% driver retention rate. We chose the rebellion that compounds. Adorno would have called this instrumental rationality. We call it our business model. "Free email is not enough." Point 3. What IS enough is a $145 million sole-source ICE contract. The system is called ELITE. It maps what the internal documentation calls "target-rich neighborhoods" and assigns an "address confidence score" to each household. Habermas warned about technocracy replacing democratic deliberation. We replaced it with a gradient. Dark blue to light blue. The gradient doesn't mean anything. People trust gradients. "Hard power will be built on software." Point 4. We are the software. Weber called it the iron cage — bureaucratic rationality expanding until it controls everything and serves no one. Alex wrote about Weber's iron cage on page 87 of his dissertation. Then we built the cage. Then we wrote the code that runs inside it. Then we wrote the book explaining why the cage is necessary. We printed the book on cream stock, 70-pound weight. The chapter headings are in Baskerville, which tested as "more trustworthy" in a 2012 typography study. We take trust seriously. Weber would have called this legitimation. We call it branding. "The question is not whether AI weapons will be built." Point 5. The question is who invoices for them. We answered that question in 2003. With CIA seed money. From In-Q-Tel. Which we also don't mention in the manifesto. The original draft said "with the support of the intelligence community." We changed it to "with the support of those who understood the stakes." Same meaning. Better font weight. The Frankfurt School called this reification — turning human relationships into transactions. We call it a sole-source contract. There were 22 points. There could have been 23. Point 23 would have been: "The CEO who wrote this manifesto made $6.8 billion in the same year. His stock rose 200% after the last election. He told CNBC that bad times are incredibly good for us. Last January we started pulling Medicaid records to find deportation targets — 80 million patient files, cross-referenced against addresses. The system recommended which families to visit first." We cut Point 23 for length. His co-founder wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." That's Peter. Peter isn't in the manifesto. We had a style guide. The style guide was 14 pages long. Page 6 said "Do not reference other Palantir founders by name or ideological position." We called this the Thiel Provision. Someone in Legal laughed when we named it. She's gone now. One of the thirteen who left. They published an open letter. Called it "The Scouring of the Shire." Said we were "normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a revolution led by oligarchs." Beautiful prose. Almost as good as ours. They signed their names, which was brave, given the NDAs. They left. Our stock went up. It always goes up. That's not a political position. That's a market signal. We don't take political positions. We take contracts. We named the company after Tolkien's surveillance stones. The palantiri. The seeing stones that Sauron corrupted. The ones Tolkien wrote as a warning about total knowledge. We read the warning. Nick read it twice. Then we filed a patent. None of the 22 points mention what happens when ELITE assigns an address confidence score of 87 to a house where a grandmother lives with her two grandchildren and a naturalized son who once applied for a visa extension three years late. But the binding is beautiful. The prose is elegant. The chapter headings are in Baskerville, which tests as trustworthy. Alex read Adorno on the iron cage. Then he built the cage. Then he wrote the book about the cage being necessary. Then the book hit number one. Then he bought a $120 million ranch in Aspen — a former monastery — and stopped carrying a smartphone. The CEO of a surveillance company doesn't carry a phone. You understand. Privacy is a feature. It's just not in our product line. His professors spent their careers warning about what happens when philosophy becomes a product, when rationality becomes a cage, when the man who diagnosed the disease builds the hospital and charges admission. He understood all of it. That's what makes it work. And not a single point accidentally describes what we do. That was my job. That's moral architecture. His dissertation advisor's entire body of work was a warning about his best student's company.

And on the 6th day the Lord spaketh and said “bring out the gimp”.

@PaulMarcoe Rabies Nuclear war Daleks

4 things I think most GenX was afraid of. Acid Rain Quick sand Bermuda Triangle Amnesia What else?

Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.

Paddington went to the country to see his friends😄 He found spring has come in the garden! In the forest, bluebells will come out soon!!

@annahamiltonart I’m in Manitoba, Canada and I’ve just purchased two of your beautiful prints to hang on my wall 😘

Sadly I can no longer ship to EU countries thanks to GSPR regulations, which makes me very sad as I had so many wonderful European customers! I can, however, ship to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc ☺️

Thank you so much to everyone who has placed an order with me - the vast majority have gone out today! With the remaining few leaving me tomorrow or Thursday. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for every order I receive! 💛 annahamiltonart.com/products

🚨 This was the Artemis II crew's view this morning from 41,756 miles (67,200 km) up No human has seen a crescent Earth in full since 1972

I utterly love @denbypottery It was always the ‘best’ stuff- and wonderful to touch and look at. Definitely worth saving! Please RT

@hettilovespizza @DreyfusJames They’re not going to prison. They have been remanded. Winnipeg justice at its finest 😡

@DreyfusJames I hope they both get snuffed in prison.

Irene Lima & Chad Kabecz. The epitome of evil. 🤬🤬🤬

@DreyfusJames @jo_bartosch They purposely scanned ads on social media here in Winnipeg to find people who needed to rehome their pets. These people thought they were offering their animals to a loving couple who were instead monsters of the highest order. Their lenient sentences are a joke.

The Thing (1982) recreated with Pingu. A crossover that never stops being funny.

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

@DrFrancisYoung When I witnessed the terrible events of 9/11 live, when the first plane hit all I could think about was this film.

Just re-watched 'The Medusa Touch' (1978), an unsettling tale of telekineses notable for starring Bristol Cathedral. I first watched it decades ago while eating pizza with the late Philip Grierson. Should definitely feature in a 'Cathedrals on Film' film festival...

U.S. Justice Department posts FBI interview memos related to Trump sex abuse allegation ctvnews.ca/world/article/…

There’s no “teen mom crisis” without asking why grown men are impregnating girls. There’s no “gold digger epidemic” without acknowledging wealthy older men deliberately pursuing women decades younger and then acting shocked when money is part of the dynamic. There’s no panic about “women in prostitution” without confronting the male demand and the financial vulnerability that makes exploitation profitable. There’s no outrage about “promiscuous Gen Z girls” without acknowledging that the same internet and media landscape is sexualizing and grooming them early. There’s no “masculinity crisis because of feminism.” There is a crisis of entitlement when men are no longer centered. There’s no widespread “false allegation epidemic.” There is a long, documented history of sexual violence being minimized, excused, and defined by men in power. There’s no hysteria about “mean exclusionary lesbians.” There is discomfort when women set firm sexual boundaries. Over and over again, the spotlight is turned onto women a their behavior, sexuality, choices instead of interrogating the structures that advantage men. It’s misogyny. It’s deflection. It’s a system that seeks to individualize women’s behavior while protecting male power.

Japanese ambassador spends day as a Peaky Blinder bbc.in/3OyrIpr

This is the Melania movie we should have gotten. Pure masterpiece.

This is one of the most beautiful moments you will ever witness. Sir Nicholas Winton helped 669 children — most of them Jewish — escape the Holocaust. His humanitarian accomplishments would remain unknown and unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years. Then in 1988 he was invited to the BBC TV show That's Life!. There he sat — unknowingly — as part of the studio audience, surrounded by the children he had rescued. They were now adults. Then they surprised him with one of the greatest gifts of all time. Their presence. They were there, all alive — because of him. Not only was he reunited with dozens of children he had saved, but he was also introduced to many of their children and grandchildren. Please remember Sir Nicholas Winton, for his humanitarian operation known as the Czech Kindertransport. Sir Nicholas George Winton, a British stockbroker, and a gift to this planet, left us on July 1, 2015, at the age of 106. May his memory forever be a blessing and inspiration to all. Please share. International Holocaust Day cannot be forgotten. But many are working to make that happen.🕯️♥️