Extra   page 31

We were working secretly for the military
Our experiment in sound was nearly ready to begin
We only know in theory what we are doing
Music made for pleasure, music made to thrill

It was music we were making here until
They told us all they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red
It's a mistake in the making

From the painful cries of mothers to a terrifying scream
We recorded it and put it into our machine

They told us all they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red
It's a mistake in the making
It could feel like falling in love
It could feel so bad
It could feel so good
It could sing you to sleep

But that dream is your enemy
We won't be there to be blamed
We won't be there to snitch
I just pray that someone there can hit the switch

They told us all they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red
It's a mistake in the making

And the public are warned to stay off

Kate Bush

User: "I'm having a problem."

Programmer: (without checking anything else) "You should upgrade."

(time passes)

User: "I upgraded. It's still happening."

Programmer: (radio silence... they've already moved on)

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2014/01/19/lies/

Perhaps the analogy should be a free citizen of a democratic society gradually allows corporations to (after being deemed a living entity) slowly distribute all wealth creation to the plutocrats as they go from being solid middle class to a virtual slave in another corporation's giant warehouses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670185

From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’

Edgar Mitchell

Glance at the sun. See the moon and stars. Gaze at the beauty of the green earth. Now think.

Hildegard von Bingen

All real living is meeting.

Martin Buber

It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.

Stephen Hawking

Freiheit ich will dich aufrauhen mit Schmirgelpapier du geleckte.

Hilde Domin

That's why McDonalds works, and software development is a perpetual disaster - McDonalds understand that to manage even something as simple as flipping burgers, you need to have done it yourself first!

It's the arrogance of business school management that's responsible for a great deal of turmoil across many areas of everyday life. Just imagine going to school for something that's not difficult, to 'learn' how to boss people around. For good pay!

Isn't that the dream of every non-creative, lazy, half-wit you never want managing anybody ever? Yes... yes it is...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16415032

We would rather forgive the evil proliferating all around us than the rebellion against it, which we mistake for the true evil.

Arno Gruen

Shitting on a canvas and calling it experimental so it will mean something gives us some nice information about people, but no useful information about art.

Haley Thurston

https://carcinisation.com ... f-experimental-art-badly/

Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird.

Dong Nguyen

We already have sufficient technology, agricultural & manufacturing output, and logistics in place to feed, clothe, and assumably shelter every human on the planet. Social organization away from surplus value hoarding by big capital seems to be the key missing piece of the puzzle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16054830

There are many people who are not entirely themselves because as children they were not given time to think about themselves. And because they don’t know everything about themselves they can’t know everything about everything. But no one likes to admit that she doesn’t know everything about everything. And so these people try to make up for not knowing everything about everything by doing things.

[..]

People who for some reason find it impossible to think about themselves, and so really be themselves, try to make up for not thinking with doing. They try to pretend that doing is thinking.

Laura Riding

It is very sad then that so many children are hurried along and not given time to think about themselves. People say to them when they think that they have been playing long enough: “You are no longer a child. You must begin to do something.” But although playing is doing nothing, you are really doing something when you play; you are thinking about yourself. Many children play in the wrong way. They make work out of play. They not only seem to be doing something, they really are doing something. They are imitating the grown-ups around them who are always doing as much instead of as little as possible. And they are often encouraged to play in this way by the grown-ups. And they are not learning to be themselves.

Laura Riding

The real isolation comes from the need to transcribe every external perception into a shallow internal one before acknowledging it.

http://www.datapacrat.com ... ciprocality/r2/index.html

War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Judgement of the International Military Tribunal for Germany

This misuse of ‘professionalism’ to refer to the faux Victorian mannerliness fashionable amongst lesser suits is just one more troubling aspect of loss of conceptual resources inculcated by corporate culture.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15835652

Modern Western culture seemingly has entered a failure-mode unprecedented in history, where we have nobody willing to go first, to stand out, to do what needs to be done, to enact the changes everyone else wants. We've run out of empathetic iconoclasts—people who see the suffering of distant/distributed others, and for whom that aggregate suffering outweighs the risk that might come to the comfortable-life-in-obscurity of all their closer companions. The people with hearts that bleed for their fellow citizens, but then don't shrivel back at the thought of their companions being the ones who end up bleeding.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15835227