yeah, ok

The next time the U.S. talks about human rights, it should clarify that those rights do not apply to women.

Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights

NYC - raining

 

we can only depend on ourselves, our own strength, our own preparation, our own will

The coming war will be more tragic and bloody. There will be no mercy and no reinforcements. For everything we can only depend on ourselves, our own strength, our own preparation, our own will, and our own ability to prevail in all out conflict. There is no retreat.

"将到来的战争将会更加惨烈，也会更加血腥，不会有仁慈，也不会有援军，一切都只能靠我们自己，靠我们自己的力量，自己的备战，自己的意志，自己的拼杀，没有退路可言。"

original

translation

 

The banality of writting for the NYT

What is the “The banality of evil” in China? 

As we are, we two, we three
As I alone can never be.

How I lost my past

... the United States that[sic] has created during the Cold War a formidable machinery of open and concealed propaganda. That machinery cannot be easily turned off. It cannot produce narratives that do not agree with the dominant one because no one would believe them or buy such books.  There is an almost daily and active rewriting of history...

How I lost my past

 The inside story of the Pfizer vaccine: ‘a once-in-an-epoch windfall’

"you could have it ranging up to $1,000 a dose"

"There’s a significant opportunity for those margins to improve" 

"we saved the world"

"to say that they are wielding their power fairly, openly, with a sense of compassion, is manifestly untrue.”

“I think it’s immoral for anybody to profiteer to the extent that has happened out of a serious crisis for humanity as a whole.”

Skog

 This big brown bear always greets you with open arms. Cuddly like no other and with a lovely giant stomach where you can feel safe resting - in other words, a real softy.

Djungelskog

 

Courage born of fear

"To place our faith in a desperate, hopeless attempt to save everyone...and to see it amount to naught in the end.

What else could we do but offer up that tiny remainder in a final, futile effort? Even knowing, deep down, it was worth but a few moments more..."

We All Lift Together

 

 China Bans For-Profit School Tutoring in Sweeping Overhaul

The out-of-school education industry has been “severely hijacked by capital,” according to a separate article posted on the site of the Ministry of Education. “That broke the nature of education as welfare.”

 

functional programming toolkit

Oh girl it's you

@sarahcothran

new view

 

Tiny

 

Where are the space arks? 

The great and terrible scientific and technological inventions we associate with the present are almost all more than half a century old... During that axial age, humanity dreamed of ecumenopolises, of heavy industry and its by-products removed off-planet, of giant cylindrical worlds in orbit, of towers stretching into the heavens, of Dyson swarms of man-made infrastructure harvesting the full power of the Sun, of a Kardeshev II civilisation capable of re-engineering the solar system. These dreams already seem absurd.

what do we do with all that history – all that rage, all these memories?

 Ethiopia’s Long War

Isabella's Lullaby

The Insulindian Miracle

Exhale

Down by the river

Cosmic Clock

 

From brooding gulfs are we beheld
By that which bears no name

Its heralds are the stars it fells
The sky and Earth aflame

Corporeal laws are unwrit
As suns and love retreat

To cosmic madness laws submit
Though stalwart minds entreat

In luminous space blackened stars
They gaze, accuse, deny

Roiling, moaning, this realm of ours
In madness lost shall die

Carrion hordes trill their profane
Accord with eldritch plans

To cosmic forms from tangent planes
We end as we began

Motherboard

Elysium

A moment's respite

Oranjese lit

What is beauty

This was all our last generation managed

The logic of the system is totalizing

The most working class way to go

K - "Looks like one of the locals..."

YOU - "We know who this is. It's the working class woman's missing husband -- dead on the boardwalk."

K - "The woman you met at the bookstand?... why do you think it's her husband?"

YOU - "[Because] this is the most working class way to go -- completely alienated and forgotten."

Mass murderer

"You can live *entirely* outside of that suspicion. Billions of people go about not being guilty of mass murder." He nods up. "Just not her."

The greatest innocence

Shipwrecked

"I was born healthy in the arms of a dying civilisation, and throughout my existence, I have had the feeling of surviving ... while so many things around me were falling apart; like characters in a film who are crossing streets where all the walls are crumbling, and who come out somehow unscathed, shaking the dust off their clothes, while behind them the entire city is no more than a pile of rubble."

Covid-19 in America

humming

The heart asks pleasure first

"A moth flaps its wings. There is a cold breeze."

Quality of the 'Economist'

‘Cosmo’ for Capitalists

"It was always a dull stupid paper even when it was honest. But to read sophistical arguments in no better style than Wilson’s is a task I would not condemn a dog to."

Another age of ignorance

Facts don't matter. Lies don't matter. Deaths don't matter. Lives don't matter.

Footsteps of the sun

Revolution? How novel.

The LRB at 40

Origins of the LRB: 0:00
Editing:  21:10
Form of the essay: 37:11
Escalators: 40:21
Proportion of female writers: 1:18:38

1:22:57
"I've observed it recently and I've observed it and I am observing it now myself I guess that the book reviews in the paper... very often don't address the books a great deal..."

Hic sunt dracones

Approaching the Avid Horizon

In life, as in your art, you sought the sun and the stars.

A Moment's Memory

In-flight

Where were we?

Oh yes... in-flight. In-transit. Remembering. Forgetting.

This is What You Are

Dream.

Dream. Not of what you are. But of what you want to be.

A singer's regrets

"Did you know that I was a zee-captain's daughter? I could have been a pilot; a merchant; or an explorer. But I ran away from sea. And now I'm stuck on the stage, until my looks give out and my voice fails."

"One life," she says, eventually. "That's all we have."

Broken Photosynthesis

Bruno's Theme

Sing a song of sorrow in a world where time has vanished

Le dîner

Beneath a sky on the verge of falling

a glimpse of other stars

Was a glimpse of other stars all they longed for?

ensemble

看过了世界，读了（太多）书。从现在只希望，和一个特别的人，在我们一起选择的生活中，共同快乐。

Ruins

Acquire a ballroom of incomparable splendour

The Wandering Earth, movie

I am probably not the intended audience for this movie as I disliked it quite a bit. The thing that irked me the most was characterization:

Yes, just as portrayed in the movie, human beings are capable of compassion, kindness, cooperation, and even self-sacrifice while working towards a common goal. But these are not revelations or keen observations of human nature.

A Metamorphosis

Magdalene's

"The staff at Magdalene's promise treatments for the deleterious effects of the High Wilderness: loneliness, desperation, folly, regret, love."

Advanced Wistful Stargazing

"This book contains comprehensive maps of the night sky, charts the patterns of several known comets, and speculates on the existence of other celestial bodies not yet perceived by kith eyes.

The author's tone is supportive and kind, encouraging those with a passion for the stars to nurture their curiosity and find deeper understanding of themselves in the vast unknown.

The maps might be useful to someone. The lesson might be useful to everyone."

"The softest of rains falls in the street..."

Does anything happen in these books?

itemised

"It is what a different postwar theoretical philosophy called redemption; all these insignificant moments of an insignificant daily life are here redeemed, by the ordinary, undistinctive sentences which write them down. They have not been transformed, or lent some higher meaning; they remain what they were before, transient and of no particular interest. Nor are they lifted into the timeless eternity of classical literature, posterity and the canon: you can dip into them wherever you like and they will not be any more quotable..."

"...this ‘being-for-the-reading-other’ makes for a new kind of otherness"

Geoscape

Trinity

Adagio Stellar

Goodbye Chicago

Before we parted, I asked you: "We all came to this city to change our lives. Are you happy how your life has changed?"

Goodbye Chicago. Stay beautiful.

Chinese SF

"Each chapter is headed with a ‘life goal’: the first is ‘Drink some water that is not bitter, make some money’; the last is ‘Fly to the stars, draw humanity’s gaze back to the depths of the cosmos.’"

from the depths of the Pacific to the edge of the galaxy

"I solemnly swear, to devote my life and ability
in the defense of the United Nations of Earth
to defend the constitution of man
and to further the universal rights of all sentient life
from the depths of the Pacific
to the edge of the galaxy
for as long as I shall live."

A game I have loved and what it taught me: SMAC

In Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999), we are put in charge of ensuring the survival of the last remnants of humanity, a few thousand people sent urgently in a starship to colonize the star system Alpha Centauri in the final days of Earth. Through the game, we not only get to decide how humanity may (or may not) survive, but also decide how humanity evolves into different future societies, and find its place among the stars. This unique science fiction setting drew me to Alpha Centauri as a teenager. At first, I expected to be simply entertained by the game. Yet years later as an adult, I still remember Alpha Centauri as a wellspring of ideas from which I drank and became transformed. 

Through Alpha Centauri, I discovered ideas about how future societies may organize themselves to ensure human survival and progress. I discovered ideas about what future speculative technologies might be and how they will affect future societies. I remember that playing the game made me felt less lonely in the world, because I discovered that loneliness is a universal human condition and that it is timeless. I discovered hope and optimism in an uplifting possible future in which humanity finds its place among the stars. I found and grappled with ideas that are bigger than me. I made decisions that made me reflect on my capacity for empathy. I discovered that history is not a guiding moral force. I found these ideas so unexpected and erudite in a computer game that playing the game became a way for me to meditate about my place in the world...

Lying awake in bed

Lying awake in bed last night, I heard what sounded like Chinese opera music playing from my neighbor's apartment. No it can't be, I thought and closed my eyes. And for a few seconds, I was back in my childhood bed in my grandparents' house. Then, as now, light from the the evening streets leaked through my bedroom windows. And I could hear my neighbor's TV playing audibly. When lay still, I could make out the words of the TV shows being played. Sometimes, I would lie with my eyes open, tracing out the room in semi darkness. Other times I would lie with my eyes closed. Time slowed, and nothing else seem to mattered.

gravity is desire

There will still be something beautiful

"One of those messages tells of a love which failed, and a fall. It tells, too, of what came after."

Mortal. Machine. The heart is destiny's engine.

...hurtling forever towards the earth

"What have you done? What has changed? Impossible to tell."

Brazil

"There are parts of my life that you don't know," you said. "Before I met you, there was someone else, and things happened when I went back to Brazil."

Goodbye Houston

Stay beautiful.

Elated

I am free.

"Our intuitive interpretation in such cases seems to arise from the association of connected ideas, not by logical inference on the basis of known facts about the world."

The concept of cat face

  















"You’re famous French detective Antoine Saint Germain. You’ve gathered the suspects in one room (as you do) to announce the culprit. The only problem is that you have no idea who is actually guilty."

Death off the Cuff
What Will You, The Detective, Do Next?

Ducks

An amateur mistake, surely. It is common knowledge that Gloranthan Ducks are death-worshipping berserkers: their terrible wraith is without equal in Dragon Pass.


https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/750392743478734848

Silently corrupt

This is a terrifying bug: any ZoL pool that was created with v0.6.4 and above (released April 8, 2015) is corrupt. Worst of all, it is silently corrupt.

Silently corrupted file in snapshots after send/receive

Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

For heaven’s sake man, go!

The speed of space

During inflation, two particles traveled a millimeter or so in in 10 ^ -32 seconds. This means that they traveled at about 10 ^ 20 times the speed of light.

We Are Star Stuff

Hurricane Wasteland

Degrees of freedom

So the question almost forces itself on us: is there something about your identity, your individual consciousness, that’s inextricably bound up with degrees of freedom that it’s physically impossible to clone?

 “Can computers become conscious?”: A Reply to Roger Penrose

To the Ends of the Galaxy

The Three Body Problem 三体

I haven't read sci-fi in years, and so it was with a feeling of elation that I read through The Three Body Problem 三体 and The Dark Forest 黑暗森林. A couple of thoughts:

Aside from the content, what struck me are the limited narrative devices, which seems to be the main  body of criticism that this was a good story told by a not so good story-teller. E.g. cliffhangers in the traditional sense are non-existent; some chapters end in declarative statements that do not even function as transitions. In the face of this shortcoming, I find it more remarkable that the suspense is maintained and driven by the plot alone.

National history joining world history, autarkic cultural developments bridged by the common heritage of science, contingent circumstances reverting to universal axioms. The permutation of these themes gives the novel its suppleness and originality.The first is not a new motif, but significance of this novel in the wider body of Chinese literature lies in it endowing the reader a belonging in the future of world history. And in doing so, kept Chinese society awake and brought it closer to the world.

 

The gauntlet

Panacea

Your glory knows no bounds

Cuirassier, artillerie, and er... Renault FT... everything seems to be in order here.

RPS

Analysis followed through to conclusions

"This particular operation means to render unthinkable the idea that people could arrive at revolutionary politics via a clear-headed analysis followed through to conclusions. Instead they must be in the grip of some hidden compulsion which they obey relentlessly, all the while insisting that this obedience is freedom."

 Review of 'The East'

The sea and her love

ZFS on Linux with LUKS startup automount; Ubuntu 16.04

When ZFS became a first class citizen under Ubuntu, the issue of ZFS on Linux with LUKS not auto-mounting properly at startup was finally addressed in Xenial 16.04.

The following steps successfully produced a successful auto-mount on a nightly build of Xenial in VirtualBox:

# list block devices using /dev/disk/by-id
sudo ls /dev/disk/by-id

# identify the block device for the LUKS container; here, the example is a VirtualBox device
ata-VBOX_HARDDISK_VBd5b297e5-009dc9f9

# create a key file
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/root/key bs=1024 count=64

# encrypt [using defaults here for simplicity] target block device with key file
sudo cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/disk/by-id/ata-VBOX_HARDDISK_VBd5b297e5-009dc9f9 /root/key

# find the newly encrypted LUKS container uuid
sudo blkid

# the result should show the device with TYPE="crypto_LUKS"
/dev/sdc: UUID="b7458a4d-2d45-42bc-8fe7-f392e0a0f85f" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"

# open the LUKS container with key file and map it to a name, example here is mapped to "crypt-c"
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen UUID=b7458a4d-2d45-42bc-8fe7-f392e0a0f85f --key-file /root/key crypt-c

# add a line for the new LUKS container under crypttab so it can be identified during startup
sudo nano /etc/crypttab
crypt-c UUID=b7458a4d-2d45-42bc-8fe7-f392e0a0f85f /root/key luks

# Identify the LUKS partition UUID
sudo ls /dev/disk/by-id

# the result should show the device starting with dm-uuid-CRYPT
dm-uuid-CRYPT-LUKS1-b7458a4d2d4542bc8fe7f392e0a0f85f-crypt-c

# create the zfs partition on top of the LUKS partition
sudo zpool create -o ashift=12 zfs-test-pool /dev/disk/by-id/dm-uuid-CRYPT-LUKS1-b7458a4d2d4542bc8fe7f392e0a0f85f-crypt-c

# nothing added under /etc/fstab

# upon restarting, zfs-test-pool is auto-mounted and can be verified with zpool status

Reference links:
zfs-raid-and-luks-encryption-in-linux
zfs-on-linux-with-luks-encrypted-disks
zfs-raidz-encryption
zfsonlinux/pkg-zfs/issues/126
cryptsetup/+bug/1422153
Dm-crypt/Device_encryption manual

St. Dominic

But what then?

"But what then? Is it better to stand by in the face of tragedy? To let it wash over the world, a hungry tide?"