Monday, April 29, 2024

Daniel Schmachtenberger and global coordination

This post is a collection of quotes from Daniel Schmachtenberger on an episode of the Your Undivided Attention podcast (hosted by the Center for Humane Technology) in 2024 titled A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger. The episode can be found at this link. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "When we talk about what the catastrophic risk landscape is, that's the landscape. The metacrisis is how do we solve all of that and recognizing that our problem solving mechanisms haven't even been able to solve the problems we've had for the last many years let alone prevent these things. And so the central orienting question, its like the U.N. has 17 sustainable development goals, there's really one that must supersede them all which is develop the capacity for global coordination that can solve global problems. If you get that one, you get all of the other ones. If you don't get that one, you don't get any of the other ones." (28:45)

2. "What is a post-internet, post-social media, post-info singularity fourth estate that creates an adequately educated citizenry? That's thinking about the way that our social technologies, our social systems have to upgrade themselves in the presence of the tech that obsoleted the way they did work. But we can also see, and we can give examples of this, how the new tech also makes possible new things that weren't possible before." (45:34)

Sunday, April 21, 2024

George Orwell and free speech

This post is a collection of quotes from George Orwell (1903-1950) about free speech. There are 7 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "And so the game continues. The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a régime will be fascism." (Spilling the Spanish Beans, New English Weekly, 1937)

2. "It is almost impossible to think without talking... Take away freedom of speech and the creative faculties dry up." (As I Please, 1944)

3. "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." (Freedom of the Press, 1945)

4. "To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment." (Animal Farm, 1945)

5. "The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea of discipline versus individualism. The issue of truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background." (The Prevention of Literature, 1946)

6. "Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for 24 hours a day under the eyes of the police in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed." (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)

7. "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (Original preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography, 1953 posthumous)

Allan Bloom and reason

This post is a collection of quotes from philosopher Allan Bloom (1930-1992) about reason. There are 3 quotes listed below.

1. "Only the search back to the origins of one's ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them all, can liberate us." (Giants and Dwarfs, 1990)

2. "There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is not truth about them." (Giants and Dwarfs, 1990)

3. "The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others of consideration." (Closing of the American Mind, 1987)

Umberto Eco and information

This post is a collection of quotes from writer Umberto Eco (1932-2016) about information. There are 4 quotes listed below.

1. "After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia." (Language and Lunacy, 1998)

2. "We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay." (The Name of the Rose, 1980)

3. "The problem with the internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate." (AZQuotes.com)

4."Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks... Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications." (Travels in Hyperreality, 1986)

Collection of Madonna songs

This post is a collection of Madonna songs. There are 4 songs listed below alphabetically.

  • Express Yourself
  • Hung Up
  • Ray of Light
  • Vogue

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Collection of White Stripes songs

This post is a collection of White Stripes songs. There are 4 songs listed below alphabetically.

  • Blue Orchid
  • Fell in Love With a Girl
  • Hardest Button to Button
  • Seven Nation Army

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Collection of quotes about museums

This post is a collection of quotes about museums. There are 3 quotes listed below.

1. "The purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the study and education of the public." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

2. "[The word 'museum'] is originally from the Ancient Greek Moυσεῖov... which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence was a building set apart for study and the arts." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

3. "Ancient Greeks and Romans collected and displayed art and objects but perceived museums differently from modern day views. In the classical period the museums were the temples and their precincts which houses collections of votive offerings." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

List of Boards of Canada albums and EPs

This post is a list of Boards of Canada albums and EPs as of April 2nd, 2024. There are 4 albums (bold) and 5 EPs listed below chronologically. Source: Wikipedia

  • Twoism (1995)
  • Hi Scores (1996)
  • Aquarius (1998)
  • Music Has the Right to Children (1998)
  • In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (2000)
  • Geogaddi (2002)
  • The Campfire Headphase (2005)
  • Trans Canada Highway (2006)
  • Tomorrow's Harvest (2013)