Wednesday 26 April 2023

Quotations

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Schopenhauer as a student threw his landlady down the stairs, broke her back and had to pay her an annuity. She lived to a great age. When she died he wrote on the lawyer's letter that informed him, 'Anus obit. Onus abit.' He had had 40 years to reflect on that pun.

"There is only one mountain peak, no matter which slope you climb..." Dr. Dumitru Constantin Dulcan

"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind." Nietzsche

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." Nietzsche

"Very well. So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.” Isaac Asimov in The Gods Themselves.

"There was an old Russian called Lenin
Who did 1 or 2 million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But, where he did one in,
That old Russian Stalin did ten in."
Anon

A very funny discussion about free speech between Elon Musk and an unimpressive BBC man, who reminds me of undergraduates I was surrounded by at the university. (By the way, Czechia does not have free speech, despite bring in Eastern Europe.)


Andrei Caramitru
@AndreiCaramitru
Western Europe is dying economically: - the value of ALL banks in the EU is lower than just the cash Apple has - the 3rd telecom operator in the US is worth more than ALL the telcos in Europe - Tesla is worth more than all car manufacturers in Europe. It’s crazy bad.


The constitution of the Republic of Užupis, an outcrop of Bohemia in Vilnius.








18 comments:

  1. "Everyone has a right to hot water and a tiled roof". This is not a right. It's a declaration of slavery. Because, in order to provide this "right" to those needing these things, if nobody voluntarily provides them, someone has to be enslaved to build or provide them for the needy party, against their will. It's a case of midwits playing politics (even if ironically, in their mind), without understanding the concepts of positive and negative rights.

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    Replies
    1. I agree with you but the Republic is whimsy, not a political thing.

      Delete
  2. Cute poem, except that neither Lenin nor Stalin were Russians.

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    Replies
    1. Lenin thought of himself and was thought of as Russian, but neither man had a drop of Russian blood in his veins.

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  3. Fun fact: The "Servant of the People" show was entirely in Russian.

    Double fun fact: It is now illegal to broadcast this show on Ukrainian TV because it is in the Russian language.

    Sam Ursu

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    Replies
    1. Do you have a source for your affirmation that the show is banned in Ukraine, or are you just making random things up? There was dialogue in both Russian and Ukrainian, so you're already stretching he truth.

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    2. You are barking at the wrong tree, little buddy: take your concerns to Mr Sam Ursu.

      Delete
  4. How Watchdogs are Silenced

    "As the U.S. contemplates the creation of an intelligence
    agency modeled after Bellingcat, the failure mechanisms of
    civil society become even more relevant."

    By Jack Poulson, Tech Inquiry, 2023-03-06
    https://techinquiry.org/docs/HowWatchdogsAreSilenced.pdf

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  5. "The problem with managing Putin and Russia," said
    Blair, "is that we have to deal with them when it comes to
    Iran." The rest of the strategy, he said, should be to make
    Russia a "little desperate" with our activities in areas
    bordering on what Russia considers its sphere of interest and
    along its actual borders. Russia had to be shown firmness
    and sown with seeds of confusion.

    03/27/2018
    https://wikileaks.jcvignoli.com/cable_08LONDON890

    ReplyDelete
  6. Them
    300,000 Chinese people have an IQ above 160, which means they can do highly innovative work in quantum physics and mathematics and invent sciences and win Nobels, and all of them work for the Government of China as officials, academics or researchers.

    For fifty generations, China’s geniuses have always become government officials because, well, because China only allows geniuses to run the country. No-one else need apply.

    Us
    30,000 Westerners have an IQ above 160, but none of them will ever govern a state, let alone a country. Honesty is fatal in our politics, and smart people are honest.

    In addition to their lack of intelligence, education and morality, our officials are unaccountable and have no goals. Most have never accomplished anything beyond winning an election, as their disastrous policies make clear.

    Let’s not beat a dead horse. There’s no way on God’s earth the West can compete with China, as Lee Kwan Yew warned decades ago, “The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world”.

    Talent at the Top
    Why China Leads the World
    Godfree Roberts 

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  7. EXCLUSIVE: Motive for massacre: Louisville bank shooter Connor Sturgeon wrote chilling 13-page manifesto laying out his THREE reasons for killing spree: To prove how easy it is to buy a gun, highlight America's mental health crisis...and kill himself
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11995155/Louisville-bank-killer-left-13-page-manifesto-revealing-three-motives-shooting.html

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  8. April 18th is supposedly the day on which Luther made his immortal “Here I stand” proclamation. But few know what actually led up to this soaring declaration.

    Martin Luther, patron saint of the Fart Joke, suffered from chronic constipation. (This probably accounts for his fascination with lavatory humor.)

    He spent hours in the loo, praying for relief as well as revelation. It was while he was on the John that he finally understood that the just would live by faith, acquainted as he was with the futility of simply trying harder. *Luther said himself that he made his reformatory discovery 𝑖𝑛 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑐𝑎 [Latin for "in the sewer"].

    Some have suggested that he may have even written his famous “Theses” while cloistered on the can. His constipation may explain why there are so many of them.

    So it may well be that the instrumental cause of the Protestant Reformation was as much physiological as it was theological—namely, that Luther was full of crap.

    https://nojesuittricks.substack.com/p/here-i-sit-i-can-do-no-other

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  9. "Homosexuals are like salt in soup, if there is none at all, it is a little bland, but if there is too much, it is undrinkable."

    “Les homos c’est comme le sel dans la soupe. Pas du tout, fade. Trop, c'est imbuvable”

    Jean-Marie Le Pen

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  10. “All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves.”

    Elon Musk

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  11. "I like most men better than I like women, but not in bed."

    Patricia Highsmith

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  12. "It was the CIA that set in motion the events that forced Nixon from the presidency."

    How the Deep State Took Down Nixon
    By Nathan Pinkoski
    April 6, 2023
    https://archive.is/0eMZ3#selection-149.206-161.155

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  13. Nick Cave: ...So I was not really interested in the punk rock thing with Thatcher. That was the energy, a hatred of the establishment, behind that music. I came from Australia; I didn’t have that political fury. I was much more concerned with fucking with people on a different kind of a level.

    Freddie Sayers : So how do you fuck with people in 2023?

    Nick Cave: You’d go to church and be a conservative.

    https://unherd.com/2023/04/nick-cave-on-christ-and-the-devil/

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  14. Ought to say it: line #15 of the constitution comes against the third quote; attempted-humour

    ReplyDelete