Fascism, as defined by The War Department in 1943 – May 29, 2023 – by Heather Cox Richardson
May 30, 2023
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
— Read on heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-29-2023
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
CERN celebrates 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web • The Register:
On April 30, 1993, CERN signed off on a decision that the World Wide Web – a client, server, and library of code created under its roof – belonged to humanity (the letter was duly stamped on May 3).
“CERN relinquishes all intellectual property rights to this code, both source and binary form, and permission is granted for anyone to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it” states a letter signed on that day by Walter Hoogland and Helmut Weber – at the time respectively CERN’s director of research and director of administration.
Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close. – POLITICO:
This is, by far the smartest analysis of gun violence I’ve ever seen, breaking it down by major cultural influence rather than geography, and derives some really useful data from that.
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself. The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional, cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed.
The Deep South is the most deadly of the large regions at 15.6 per 100,000 residents followed by Greater Appalachia at 13.5. That’s triple and quadruple the rate of New Netherland — the most densely populated part of the continent — which has a rate of 3.8, which is comparable to that of Switzerland. Yankeedom is the next safest at 8.6, which is about half that of Deep South, and Left Coast follows closely behind at 9. El Norte, the Midlands, Tidewater and Far West fall in between.
A Brief Compendium of Vintage Opium Underworlds
April 19, 2023
A Brief Compendium of Vintage Opium Underworlds:
I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so if you’re reluctant to step inside the world of 19th century junkies, I suggest you close the door and choose something a little lighter and brighter from our menu. I’m not quite sure how I ended up here myself, stockpiling antique photographs that have survived from the Opium Age and ended up on the internet. In my years of hunting and gathering in the far corners of the web, I’ve always been stopped in my tracks by these images because they seem like such rare and almost unreal insights into late 19th century society.
How America Embraced Aspics With Threatening Auras – Gastro Obscura:
As with so many things considered cutting-edge from the early to mid-1900s, this former food of the future is now a subject of derision and morbid fascination. Facebook groups like “Crimes against jello and vegetables and other mid-century transgressions” and “Aspics with threatening auras” collectively have tens of thousands of members, all of whom revel in the weirdest examples of the genre.
Whether it’s a whole turkey in aspic from the 1920s or a gelatin loaf portrait of Queen Elizabeth, the appeal lies in juxtapositions that feel, well, wrong. It’s what Freud would have called unheimlich, but in today’s internet parlance is known as “cursed.” Like an eyeball with a set of human teeth protruding under the lashes, the cursed aesthetic hinges on an image’s ability to make the viewer squirm.
Sony Group Portal – Gallery | Sony Design | History of Sony Design:
On this page you can see a wide range of products and services created by Sony designers.
Please take a look at the history of Sony Design.
One item I’d never seen before is the HB-101, which was actually a pretty sexy looking MSX1 Compatible home computer that never went anywhere.
— via Daring Fireball
50 Years Later, We’re Still Living in the Xerox Alto’s World – IEEE Spectrum:
As should now be apparent, how the Alto came to shape our lives with computers a half century later isn’t the story of any one individual. In our culture, however, the history of technology is habitually presented as a sequence of remarkable individual achievements. But this is wrong. Innovation is the work of groups, of communities. These provide the context and the medium for the actions of the individual. Leadership is a meaningless concept outside of a group.
The remarkable story of the Alto is the story of such communities. It is a story of how a broad research community developed a shared vision for interactive, networked, graphical, personal computing. It is a story of how a smaller group of talented individuals came together in a new laboratory to realize that vision and to experiment with it. And it is a story of this group moving on, finding new colleagues and organizations in the rapidly expanding personal computer industry, and working for decades to bring the Alto way of computing to the world.
This is a under-recognized part of the history of the tech we use… Xerox and Bell Labs gave a lot of people room to play and figure out much of the foundations of what we see around us, but also didn’t know what to do with any of it until the right people took those balls and ran.
Why Is There an Empty Picture Frame in Joe Biden’s Oval Office?:
Fascinating – but the real tidbit I didn’t realize was that President Biden has a bust of Caesar Chavez in the Oval Office…
The Case For Shunning – by A.R. Moxon – The Reframe
February 27, 2023
The Case For Shunning – by A.R. Moxon – The Reframe:
There has to come a point when we finally insist to take the evidence before us and to draw moral conclusions—because unless we do, we won’t ever be able to address the problems before us. If we don’t make moral judgments about speech, we’ll find ourselves on a treadmill of discourse, always running but never getting anywhere, endlessly compelled to apply an indestructible skepticism to the evidence, and an indestructible credulity to specious conjecture and lies.
It’s time for us to understand people for what they insist on being. To understand that participation with the popularized genocidal urges gripping our country is an unacceptable moral failing, as is support for the politicians and pundits who are pursing it, as is membership in the political party around which it is organized and energized. To understand that unforgivable moral failings deserve not our ears, but our backs.
Believe people when they tell us who they are – If we did that sooner, Scott Adams finally saying the quiet part out loud wouldn’t really be a surprise.
RPS Time Capsule: the games worth saving from 2006 | Rock Paper Shotgun:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Developer:Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
From: Steam, GOG, Humble, Game PassEd: I am convinced Oblivion’s fantasy setting of Cyrodiil is the closest you can get to a waking lucid dream. Break out of jail and you’re in this lush landscape, with golden hues and soft textures and warm strings that accompany your wanderings. I like how it frames its world through its mundane, little details, too. Dirt paths may simply lead to quaint huts in the middle of the woods or moss-covered ruins pocked with red mushrooms. There’s a sense that you’re exploring somewhere that makes sense for its inhabitants, rather than a showroom for achievement hunters.
Skyrim is in many ways more fun to jump in and play, its certainly more stable, but of the 5 mainline Elder Scrolls entries I think Oblivion was the one that most found the perfect balance of narrative, customization, and control… At the expense of being a bit buggy and wierd.
Pocket Realities 