Interstellar - Main Theme

Parts of the piano/organ reminded me of Philip Glass's "Koyaanisqatsi".

Tinkerbell

"Fact is, when I see the eagerness of Western supporters to celebrate the Hong Kong democracy movement, I reminded I’m still waiting for the Asian Edward Said to write about the West’s need to frame, appropriate, and validate its 21^st-century concept of the “Orient”—and self-validate its own values, attitudes, and increasingly embattled sense of superiority—by defining, parsing, and condemning the mainland Chinese Other it chooses to observe across the Pacific."

Clap Harder or the Hong Kong Tinkerbell Gets It!

The singular accomplishment that is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

When I think of the watersheds of thought, SMAC stands out as something that enabled intense engagements with ideas.

Its value as a cultural artifact should be judged by its ability to successfully go beyond entertainment and wish fulfillment. And in so succeeding, SMAC changed the outlooks and expectations of a whole generation.

To defend inequality, and make acceptable the status quo

"... this is an establishment that has had experience of not being the establishment, although it has always drawn most (though, crucially, not all) of its membership from the ruling class. It ‘is made up – as it has always been – of powerful groups that need to protect their position in a democracy in which almost the entire adult population has the right to vote’. These groups are ‘amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.’"

"Most startling to our descendants will be that ‘this was passed off as normal, as entirely rational and defensible,’ and that ‘institutions run by the elite’ had ‘considerable success’ in redirecting ‘people’s anger to those at the very bottom of society’."

Who will stop them?

Longevity

"... when pundits discuss the future, the excitement around driverless cars and nanotechnology gives way to long faces when the topic moves to human longevity. It may be nice to live longer, but what about the effect on the economy? The question is absurd. Economic growth is about giving people more choices, and no choice is more earnestly sought than the chance of a longer life"

Live longer — and thank economics 

Cultural Identity

"... does not think that cultural identity is therefore intrinsically valuable. On the contrary, he regards it as potentially harmful. In ‘A Dissent on Cultural Identity’, he sets out his position with brutal candour: ‘That cultural identity is “a permanent feature of human life” is trivially true. We all come from somewhere … But why must each of us be more than matter-of-fact in committing our lives to our history, our culture, our identity? They – culture, history, identity – have done many things for us and many things to us. What makes us affect gratitude instead of anger in return?’"

The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke from the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence; Moral Imagination: Essays

The politics of resentment and complaint

A strong central government is needed for politics to function and for the state to survive the empowerment of the people.

The curse of all stable societies is capture by elites.


Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Political Order and Political Decay’

Drive by decision making

People often want to know enough to make decisions, but not enough to make good ones.

Our Dark Ages

How people lived, who they really are, and how they change over time are rarely entirely known. We encounter their artifacts from time to time and look upon them in mystification: their thoughts in writing, their visage and symbols, their memories through the mediation of how others remembered them. We glimpse at the occasional laughter, sorrows, and fears in lives that are shrouded in mystery.

Remix

Björk - All Is Full Of Love (Chris SU Remix)

Confession

Det Sjunde Inseglet

Sounds like a butcher's shop

silence, before the chop, panic, before the lack of mercy, powerless

'Content'

Some time ago, one of my co-workers told me, as if he is doing me a big favor, that "you need to have your own opinions." Yeah, ok. I suppose he gets to judge whether an opinion is my 'own'?

This reminds me of a particular self-aggrandizing strand of make-believe: everything that is not one's own is bad.

That is to say, people conflate ownership and actual value, and give free pass to aggressively ignorant attitudes: "So long as the opinions are my own, who cares about the truth?"

Let go your earthly tether

In the episode The Metal Clan, an interesting work within a work appears:

出尘世羁绊,入虚无如风

Let go your earthly tether. Enter the void and become emptiness, like the wind.

Starving artist as an aesthetic and all round excuse for being an asshole

There was a time when artists and writers flocked to inexpensive cities to allow themselves the trials of making art over the trials of making a living. In North America today, the main site of literary activity or literary business – which more and more amount to the same thing – is Brooklyn. Yet it’s probably one of the toughest places for a writer to live cheaply and noodle about, wearing rags. What happens when artists gravitate to places where they can make art only with great financial effort; where writers have to be journalists, adjunct professors, or work in cafés to pay the rent, leaving little time to write their novel, while learning every few months that one of their herd has secured a six-figure advance for their first book? What do their relationships and values look like, and how do their love stories unfold? This is the world of Adelle Waldman’s first book.

 
Starving artist as an aesthetic and all round excuse for being an asshole

Class war

"Thailand’s political crisis is a sorry tale of bad losers... their responsibility, and their disgrace, are very great."

 Thailand’s political crisis

The Legend of Korra Book 3

Excited!

Beauty and the Beast

Red

Flutter