Extra   page 6

If the world sees you are determined to make something of yourself it will help you.

Nelly Bly

I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A. M. until 8 P. M. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

Nelly Bly

Accept praise for its worth — politeness. Be brutally frank with yourself. It's safer.

Nelly Bly

It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

Nelly Bly

If you buy a hammer you expect it to work as long as you don't burn your toolshed. You don't expect it to change shape while you are using it, you don't expect it not to stop working once the manufacturer decides to give up on the design or once they go bust. Change being in your hands instead of the manufacturers is a feature, not a bug.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905044

After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity.

Despite claims of “decentralization”, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.

The cryptocurrency industry leverages a network of shady business connections, bought influencers and pay-for-play media outlets to perpetuate a cult-like “get rich quick” funnel designed to extract new money from the financially desperate and naive.

Financial exploitation undoubtedly existed before cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is almost purpose built to make the funnel of profiteering more efficient for those at the top and less safeguarded for the vulnerable.

Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system (eg. corruption, fraud, inequality) and using software to technically limit the use of interventions (eg. audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person.

Lose your savings account password? Your fault.
Fall victim to a scam? Your fault.
Billionaires manipulating markets? They’re geniuses.

This is the type of dangerous “free for all” capitalism cryptocurrency was unfortunately architected to facilitate since its inception.

But these days even the most modest critique of cryptocurrency will draw smears from the powerful figures in control of the industry and the ire of retail investors who they’ve sold the false promise of one day being a fellow billionaire. Good-faith debate is near impossible.

For these reasons, I simply no longer go out of my way to engage in public discussion regarding cryptocurrency. It doesn't align with my politics or belief system, and I don't have the energy to try and discuss that with those unwilling to engage in a grounded conversation.

I applaud those with the energy to continue asking the hard questions and applying the lens of rigorous skepticism all technology should be subject to. New technology can make the world a better place, but not when decoupled from its inherent politics or societal consequences.

Jackson Palmer

https://twitter.com/ummja ... tatus/1415353984617914370

The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.

Leo Rosten

Founders, investors, successful business owners and CEOs are more likely to show sociopathic behaviour than the average person next door.

They are the least competent group to be given power to shape any societal rules and contracts or to define how the humanity should look like.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845761

Yeah, tell people to eat bugs and less meat but step out of the way of fast food industry, or those farms treating cows like bags of potato. Tell people to fly less or use the train and exempt private jets.

But honestly, we deserve worse, it's our fault. We let those fucks FLY ON PRIVATE JETS to davos CLIMATE summit, and accept an increased tax on plastic bags (which incidentally was show to make people use more plastic). Anyway, yeah we deserve worse. It's not their fault. It's ours. We are the ones letting them tell us what to do while they fuck around on private jets.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776430

It's strange to me that at least within nations, the previously war-starting disagreements about the finer details of the Abrahamic religions seem to have chosen different orbits within society, politely nod to each other and know no good will come from trying to lock horns. The kids on Twitter now have apparently equally strongly held beliefs about other stuff but are utterly gob-smacked that other people won't agree with them even though they KNOW THEY'RE RIGHT.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27656703

Every day it feels like more producers truly believe they're the next Bach of beat making and think their "Masterpiece" deserves none other than the best. News flash, they wrote three other beats that same day that all sound the same.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ ... h_years_of_collaboration/

Now to balance the scale, I’d like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences cause that’s all you ever hear about in this country is our differences.

That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money.

Fairly simple thing... happens to work. You know, anything different, that’s what they’re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.

You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class... keep on showing up at those jobs.

George Carlin

"Jamming In New York"

Consumer goods suck. You keep buying them.

The average consumer is an idiot, so the bean counters keep milking them. Let's stick RGB lights in what used to be the BMW, you know the ultimate driving machine. The entire consumer market is rotten. TV? It's going to come with smart apps. Get one from NEC that's meant for commercial use.

The average consumer wants this stuff. It sells. They want pizzaz over functionality and durability. They want shiny stuff in a bigger box.

The Onion is reality. I don't think corporations/businesses are to blame. We're not voting with our wallets and instead regressing into buying more fricking touch screens. The average consumer is extremely ill-informed, sometimes that's due to the lack of time, but more often than not, it's due diligence.

The industrial, military and commercial market doesn't mess around. They want to purchase equipment that works reliably and performs to a specification. It's professional and their livelihood depends on it. It sort of self filters the entire market. Shitty things drop off the radar due to poor sales.

Neil Panchal

https://neil.computer/not ... bjects-for-everyday-life/

Linux is a kernel. But the source of all evil in the modern computing world isn't in the kernel, but the middleware and applications running on it.

So yeah, it won, in the same sense that asphalt won because all cars run on it. You still drive a Ford though.

And the reason Linux won is because the sumbitches who discovered they can make more money putting you under constant surveillance and "monetizing" your data than selling OSes and application software realized it's far cheaper and easier to leverage free software that's supported for free by volunteers than come up with their own to run their sruveillance middleware.

That's why you see all those Linux moves from Microsoft: those would have been incredible 20 years ago. But Microsoft isn't an OS maker anymore: they're a surveillance and advertisement platform now, just like Google. They don't care about Linux or open-source threatening their business model anymore, because their business model isn't what it used to be.

https://tech.slashdot.org ... sid=18967556&cid=61421590

Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.

He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled.

And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

Chuck Palahniuk

"Lullaby"

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

Jerzy Kosinski