There is ‘an equivalent to a spinal cord running down the center of every single arm.’
Source: Why every arm of an octopus moves with a mind of its own | Popular Science
Category Archives: inspiration
On Dieter Roth – by Ross Simonini – A Lie Before Its Time
Isle, Fantasia, Rot Bar
You know, there are three kinds of people in this world: people who make things happen, people who wait for things to happen and people who wonder what the hell happened
Source: On Dieter Roth – by Ross Simonini – A Lie Before Its Time
Monday Musings — 18NOV24
It time to Gird your loins folks. It’s time to do battle and get to work.
I don’t think the next 4 years (hope that’s all it will be) is going to be great for lot of people. In fact if Trump does half of what he’s telegraphed, then it’s going to be really shitty. So get ready to put some hard work into the things you feel are important, and that the elites are going to try to fuck up.
I put some resources in last week’s Musings, and a few more since then. Check them out.
So, I’m handicapped. Can drive myself, don’t leave the house as much as I used to (especially in the cold weather), I’m weak (can barely lift myself out of a chair), all that crap. I can write and make art still. Thank goodness for that. Have all (or most) of my faculties. So I can still read, also. I can’t join protests, making it to meetings is, while not impossible, not practical, unless it’s via Zoom or something. It’s not something I worried about, even a couple of years ago, but there you have it. I do what I can. Around the house I do chores, with lots of rest breaks, I cook, etc. I work in my studio, when I can. Some days motivation is damn nigh nonexistent, others it comes back.
So I do my art, I write this blog. Which I hope can be motivating for you all. I donate money to causes (not much). I Zoom with some people who help me motivate to write the comic I’m working on. I do what I can. You should to.
On that note, I’m an old fart, and there’s an organization for older people who want to make a difference. Read about it:
“Experienced Americans” are the fastest-growing part of the population: 10,000 people a day pass the 60-year mark. That means that there’s no way to make the changes that must be made to protect our planet and society unless we bring our power into play.
We’re used to thinking that humans grow more conservative as they age, perhaps because we have more to protect, or simply because we’re used to things the way they are. But our generations saw enormous positive change early in our lives—the civil rights movement, for instance, or the fight to end massive wars or guarantee the rights of women. And now we fear that the promise of those changes may be dying, as the planet heats and inequality grows.
But as a generation we have unprecedented skills and resources that we can bring to bear. Washington and Wall Street have to listen when we speak, because we vote and because we have a large—maybe an overlarge—share of the country’s assets. And many of us have kids and grandkids and great grandkids: we have, in other words, very real reasons to worry and to work.
Ten Free Ebooks for Getting Free | HaymarketBooks.org
“What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.” —Mike Davis At Haymarket, we believe that books are crucial tools in struggles against racism, imperialism, and capitalism—and for a better world. That’s why we’ve decided to make TEN key ebooks free to download: join us in reading these indispensable works of analysis, history, and strategy. Wherever each of us live, work, and are in community: the time is now to build power and fight back, together. A note for UK readers: Hope in the Dark, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, and Elite Capture are not available for readers in the UK. And, don’t miss out! Until Friday, November 15th, ALL Haymarket Ebooks are 80% Off (that means they’re available for just $2 each)!
Source: Ten Free Ebooks for Getting Free | HaymarketBooks.org
Mutual Aid
Mutual Aid as a concept was first broached by Peter Kropotkin in 1902 (although the concept is older than that.) in a book of Essays called Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896,[1] explore the role of mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity (or “mutual aid“) in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead, Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection.
Mutual Aid is considered a fundamental text in anarchist communism.[2] It presents a scientific basis for communism as an alternative to the historical materialism of the Marxists. Kropotkin considers the importance of mutual aid for prosperity and survival in the animal kingdom, in indigenous and early European societies, in the medieval free cities (especially through the guilds), and in the late 19th century village, labor movement, and impoverished people. He criticizes the State for destroying historically important mutual aid institutions, particularly through the imposition of private property.
Many biologists[3][4] (including Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of his generation) also consider it an important catalyst in the scientific study of cooperation.[5]
He argued against Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory, and this has become somewhat of a tenet among anarchists.
You can buy a beautiful copy of it here: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/peter-kropotkin/#mutualaid
Get a free copy here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
Or buy it on B&N:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336
Also there’s a new book titled Mutual Aid by Dean Spade.
Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.
Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.
You can get it wherever fine books are sold. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336
Here’s him talking about it, and organizing.
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.
Organizing is what mutual aid is about, and it’s easy to do. You can just help your neighbor with a project, that is mutual aid. (The Amish know how to do this.) Start, or contribute to, a community garden, or a community tool share. Small things as well as big things.
Here’s a link to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which is helping in the wake of the devastating hurricanes, down south.
I’m going to close this here, I think I’ve given plenty of links to get you started with this. Good luck.
Solidarity not charity.
Arcimboldo-esque Portraits Emerge from Tools of the Trade in Early 19th-Century Aquatints — Colossal
Around 1800, London-based published Samuel William Fores continued the playful tradition of composite portraiture in a series of aquatints.
Source: Arcimboldo-esque Portraits Emerge from Tools of the Trade in Early 19th-Century Aquatints — Colossal
This Newfoundland Community Pays No Property Tax, Governs Itself – NTD CANADA
Source: This Newfoundland Community Pays No Property Tax, Governs Itself – NTD CANADA
It’s also something that could be an example to other communities across the country, said Devin Drover, who is a Newfoundland resident as well as Atlantic director and general counsel for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Some of these towns really think that if they have to have a municipal property tax, and they need to offer programs and services, other people in unincorporated municipalities should have the same responsibility,” Drover told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.
He doesn’t consider that attitude fair.
“The [unincorporated] model empowers individuals to have more control over their finances, rather than paying a blank cheque to a mayor, or a mayor’s office, to decide how their money should be spent,” he said.
He said the Port de Grave community still manages to offer programming for the area.
“They pull off a great tree lighting every year. I always encourage people locally to attend.”
They also manage to do it without a “central government controlling those decisions,” he said. “The local residents can do it themselves without having to have expensive elections, having to divide the community, and having to basically have one person or a council making those decisions.”
Residents are also empowered to work together on projects they find interesting.
“When people have the ability to choose what to fund, it really shows what is most important to people.
How many hobbies is too many? • Buttondown
Hobby is capitalism’s word. It’s a crumb from capitalism’s table. Capitalism is happy that you have a hobby, especially if it can sell you HO-scale train sets to complete it, but that hobby can never be taken as seriously as what capitalism might need from you. (Oh, and that thing capitalism might need from you? Well, design is your passion, so they don’t really need to pay you adequately for that, do they?)
Sadly, capitalism is still with us, and we need to earn. So when you have to clock in, clock in. And when you clock out, clock the fuck out. Take off that stupid watch that sends texts and emails to your wrist. Toss your laptop in the basement. Get behind that drumkit, get in front of that easel, get your ass in the garden, straddle that potter’s wheel, strap on the messenger bag with all your paint cans and nozzles in it, and get the fuck to work.
bookofjoe: Henry Miller’s work schedule c. 1932-33
Metapolis | Work After Coronavirus
Bob Black is an American social philosopher known for his work on anarchism. The author of various books and numerous political essays, he specializes in the sociology and ethnography of law. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Georgetown Law School. He is most widely known for his 1985 essay «The Abolition of Work,» which has been widely disseminated in at least 13 languages. His most recent publication, «Instead of Work,» includes a compendium of his writings and an update on his 1985 essay.
This article is a continuation of that work, and i found it to be an interesting read of some of the potential things that could , and have happened since Corona. (Link to full article at bottom.)
The general tendency will be toward local autonomy amidst regional diversity. Local neighborhoods and settlements will not be fortified, gated communities with delusions of sovereignty. Regions, cultural regions, will often focus on bioregions, with permeable boundaries. [51] Diversity will flourish locally, regionally, and internationally. We will be better off by exploring the possibilities of what is closer. Big cities have brought us together physically, but separated us socially. Big workplaces have done the same thing. Mass society has given rise to «the lonely crowd»: [52] people being alone together. Paradoxically, social distancing might complement bringing people together emotionally, in a shared way of life that is more sociable than mass society.Is it contrived for me to promote this agenda as a response to the COVID-19 crisis? Of course, I do not think so. The virus is a challenge to other ideologies too, and maybe to all ideologies. Health issues, especially public health issues, are often not just health issues. Contagious disease is clearly not just a private concern for individuals and their physicians. It is a social issue. Even the physicians know that. And they know that diet, rest, safety, anxiety, insecurity, and even sociability strongly influence physical and mental health. How we live has a lot to do with how long we live, and with how well we live. Fatigue, stress, boredom, and even a touch of fear, which are often inflicted by work – they really are hazardous to your health! They adversely affect the immune system. And they just do not feel good. Maybe happiness is healthy. And maybe freedom is healthy.