eightpix

The first time my cousins from FL visited Canada, it was July. They were surprised there was no snow. So, we took them over to the rec centre and they saw a small pile of snow out back. They were thrilled.

It was dumped out of a Zamboni.

As a small child: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

As a teen: Lightning by Dean R. Koontz

As a high-schooler: Island by Aldous Huxley

My track off this album was always “The Deer Hunter.”

Rivaled only by the track before it, “Respiration”. This is such a great album.

From the past 10 years, in reverse order (from my Goodreads)

• The Passenger + Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

• Ducks by Kate Beaton

• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

• On Tyrrany by Timothy Snyder

• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Edit: a few more from the past 50 years.

• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

• Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

• Post War by Tony Judt

• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Billionaires win. They are winning in this world — imagine the world as an arena…

They first reach out to those primed to defect. The ones who think they are defending their own interests because, one day after much bootstrapping, they’ll be rich too. That’s 10% of the non-billionaire population and a large group of the young, able-bodied, entitled predominantly male population.

Another 10% opt to not fight. They’ll wait and see who comes out on top or opt for pacifism — supporting those who fight without fighting themselves.

The next 20% are those who want a compromise — not having the foresight to admit they’ll be screwed in the end by the shrewd and wily billionaire class.

That still leaves 4.8 billion people.

Well, another 10% of the planet is malnourished, living in extreme poverty, or are infirm and unable to fight. Take another 10% who lack the capacity to fight effectively, are children, or are exceedingly advanced in age.

We’re down to 3.2 billion people.

Of those who remain, each billionaire will need to kill 1 000 000 people in order to win the day. This is achieved by a combination of attacks — nuclear, chemical, biological, conventional, and systemic. Supply lines are cut early, communication lines are jammed, and every possible similarity that could bind 3.2 billion people together is spun into a wedge to divide them. The billionaires are unified behind their purchasing power. Each victorious serves as a message to the remaining people of the fresh horrors to come.

After five or six days, there are 2700 remaining billionaires, who somehow got richer and only 1 billion fighters. Demoralized, decimated, defeated, the non-billionaires give in.

The one strategy that would — nay, could — turn the tables is to upend the tables. Make money worthless. In some minds, this is the Purge. This is the antithesis.

Instead, as a thesis: truly valuing life and living things, the fragile interdependence of ecology within an economic, social, and anthropological order would negate any power that the death-driven cult of profiteering offers. I’m not talking about sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya into eternity. I am talking about doing the work of eternity — stewardship for a planet we understand (not just its commodities) and community for all participants (not just the economically viable). We can learn from one another and grow with one another without exploiting or reinforcing one another’s weaknesses.

Takers like to quote Adam Smith, Sun Tzu, or the 48 Laws of Power. The battles we do not fight will feed us. The fields we do not raze will house us. The oceans we do not destroy will connect us. The planet we treat like a home instead of a hole in the ground will support us.

I’ve spent most of my life being the bigger, stronger, heavier person in most of my friendships. If the ratio is mouse to human — or Iron Giant — I’d take the opportunity to (literally) stand on the shoulders of a giant.

Also, being the one whose tail was “pinned on” must have given him some sense of distrust. Was his tail severed only to be temporarily attached with sharp object as a game to amuse children?

Some existential stuff right there.

Tigger. And, to a degree, Owl.

I have questions.

When I’m tiny:

• is the giant still a friend?

• Am I less/ as/ more intelligent by comparison?

• do I really have to poop out the pocket?

• could I poop out the bottom of the pocket?

• what is the scale difference?

When I’m giant:

• is the pocket friend still like me?

• is the pocket friend vulnerable to my mistakes?

• am I one of few, or the only one remaining of, giants?

• is the pocket friend intelligent or more like a pet?

Pertinent examples in this inquiry are Attack on Titan, the Iron Giant, Marvel Comics’ Galactus and Celestials, that one episode of Futurama with Bender being a god, and the Shadow of the Colossus.

I’m starting to think that the Nobel Prize for Economics should be renamed the Nobel Anti-Peace Prize.

Basically, there has always been opportunity in disaster. The Shock Doctrine uncovers the methods of those who engineer or wait for crises in order to capitalize on, or pass profiteering legislation in challening times.

I read the Shock Doctrine back in '09. It crystallized the Bush II presidency in such detail and scope that I’ve never been able to forget it.

Things have only gotten worse. Even under Obama. Certainly under Trump and Biden.

The part about Yeltsin firing on his own Parliament was very insightful. Again, setting the stage for Russia’s current exercises of Shock.

Letting enough people die expedites certain forms of problem-solving; particularly those that involve the military, technology, heavy industry, reconstruction, and financial sectors of the economy. When the most expensive things are destroyed — like cities, infrastructure, and the concept of human security — that’s where the fuckiteering begins. Debt loads, overcharging, and profiteering on misery for companies /countries that caused the problems in the first place.

It’s gross.

Aw. Name more of the chaebols.

Samsung

KIA

Daewoo

Hyundai

SK

LG

Lotte

Guatemala’s ruling class spent months trying to negate the democratic election of anti-corruption, centre-left, progressivist, social-democrat, now-President Bernardo Arévalo. Certainly, the ruling class will screw with the whole system, and, possibly, they will attempt to kill him.

Bernardo is the son of former president Juan José Arévalo, whose time in office immediately followed an uprising that deposed U.S. backed dictator Jorge Ubico in 1945. Hate runs deep.

Keep in mind that the tenuous peace in Guatemala is consistently marred by gang violence, institutional corruption, kidnappings, and murder. This ray of light for the campesinos, indigenous people, and impoverished majority is, hopefully, sustainable with a mandate to improve Guatemala into a place where people can live. It would behoove (United States of) Americans to support this president as he could move the needle on making life liveable in Guatemala and stemming the flow of refugees and migrant workers to the North.

In 2007, I, a non-white non-Korean, took a job in South Korea. Then, I took another. Then, at the third job, I was hired, but the owner’s brother was amenable to some of the more racist thoughts that guided the approach to business in SK. He thought I would hurt the business. He resisted hiring another non-white, non-Korean.

The owner asked me to write a letter. Instead of saying, “that’s not my job”, I wrote the letter. I made the case. They hired another non-white, non-Korean after me.

I’m still pretty proud of that letter.

Key question here. I’d take it at 37 and go back to being 17 with the skills, knowledge, and experiences and most importantly income of my 37 year-old self. But, I’d pass myself off as 18. Unless, of course, it’s not a secret. In which case the strategy totally changes.

If it’s known and knowable that I took this drug, then I’d take it at 55 and de-age to 35. Then, when my kids are in their teens and tweens, I’ll have the energy for their B.S. Also, when I retire at 95 (b/c seriously, retirement wont be a thing for me), I’ll only be 75 and I’ll still be able to fight off some of the horde of lawyer-bots, advertisclones, and chain letters that are coming after my pension.

I would watch this in an instant. Sisko is, by a wide margin, my favourite Star Trek Captain.

A frontier, postwar Commander. A broken space station.

A crew that actively hates, seeks to misunderstand, and undermine each other.

Oh, and the first stable wormhole/celestial temple of the TimeLords.

Then, a war against a vastly superior force of the ultimate spies.

He takes on the whole impossible thing and makes everyone he meets better people.

A student of history, betrayed by the only woman he loved after the the death of his wife, a single father, a mentor, a detective, and a builder.

Sisko is absolutely amazing. Picard, what, came back from being Borg and lived a lifetime in a few minutes once?

There’s a book on this topic, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.

Heat. But that just may be the best film he was in.