Motley Kamuka

Still from Zorba (1964) Interesting interview with a woman who claims to be a sociopath, a wife, mother, psychotherapist... I honestly don't believe in "sociopath". I think people are different, and slower to warm, for sure and some people really struggle with empathy, and traumatized people have so much raging internally that sometimes empathy is blocked. I think she's taking slow to warm and blowing it up to pathological proportions, or maybe she's trying to destigmatize things. I find it weird that she identifies with it. Book isn't out yet, but outside the misuse of words to draw attention, I am interested.  There's a deep dive into Everton in Athletic . They just got back 4 points and that should give the team some relief about being relegated. They were just above the line, one point ahead of Luton, and 4 more points will really help. I've never heard that WW1 was caused by abstract language before. On p.94 Amanda Montell goes into it in Cultish...

I'm listening to Geddy Lee's autobiography My Effin' Life , and in the 3rd chapter he tells his parents story during the Holocaust, coming from Warsaw Poland to Toronto Canada. What a gut wrenching story. I've read Primo Levi, and other Holocaust memoirs and novels. This chapter can be among them. His mother even had Josef Mengele take blood from her every day, she almost died from the effort. I love Rush, saw them live in Madison on the Signals tour, 1982 or maybe 83.  I'm reading Cultish , which is about cults and how they use language.  That got me watching Wild Wild Country , a 6 part documentary on Bhagwan Rajneesh. What an amazing documentary, and what a kind book to try and treat this topic sensitively.  The next section was on Jonestown and I watched this short video to remind me. Here’s a quote I liked: “Thought-terminating clichés are by no means exclusive to "cults." Ironically, calling someone "brainwashed" can even serve as a seman...

 

"Human-reality is free because it is not enough . It is free because it is perpetually wrenched away from itself and because it has been separated by a nothingness from what it is and what it will be. It is free, finally, because its present being is itself a nothingness in the form of the "reflection-reflecting." Man is free because he is not himself but presence to himself. The being which is what it is cannot be free. Freedom is precisely the nothingness which is made-to-be  at the heart of man and which forces human-reality to make itself instead of to be . As we have seen, for human-reality, to be is to choose oneself ; nothing comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can receive or accept . Without any help whatsoever, it is entirely abandoned to the intolerable necessity of making itself be—down to the slightest detail. Thus freedom is not a being, it is the being of man—i.e., his nothingness of being."  —Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Capitalism has won big in America, even though everyone owns the roads, sidewalks and parks, and in some sense there's also communism in America. America is a blend of capitalism and communism.  One area where capitalism has won over the people is insurance, and lack of a national insurance. Insurance companies bilk Americans out of health and money. Another area is gun manufacturers. The gun lobby helps murder with propaganda and lobbying. There are actually a righteous set of people who believe it's worth 70 dead children every year for the right to own guns. That price is not too high. The educational system is a mess because of disruptions.  Trump is supposed to be responsible for 40% of the Covid deaths by his inaction and callousness.  The political system is corrupted by money. I was taught in high school that expecting more from government is a self fulfilling prophecy, places that expect good government, have better government. Expecting graft and corruption is a...

  "The fight over U.S. aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the other countries with which we have made partnerships is not about saving money—most of the funds for Ukraine are actually spent in the U.S.—or about protecting the U.S. border, as MAGA Republicans demonstrated when they killed the border security bill. It is about whether the globe will move into the 21st century, with all its threats of climate change, disease, and migration, with ways for nations to cooperate, or whether we will be at the mercy of global authoritarians.  Trump’s 2024 campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission,” and in a campaign speech in South Carolina today, he made it clear what that means. Trump has long misrepresented the financial obligations of NATO countries, and today he suggested that the U.S. would not protect other NATO countries that were “delinquent” if they were attacked by Russia. “In fact,” he said, “I would encourage [Russia] to do w...

I'm watching the last few episodes of Deep Space 9. A theme has emerged. The shifting evil present in the wars makes strange bedfellows. Keira advises the Cardassians, her lifelong foe, in how to subvert the Cardassian government, which was taken over by the Dominion and the Breen. Some can't raise above their distaste and hatred, they can't act in their own best interest. As in many dramas, the good side seems to always wins.  A Team of Rivals is the name of a history book about the disparate cabinet of Lincoln.   I hear a quote from Hickey in Community. He said you don't get to choose who you're actually fighting for when you fight for a country, you fight for the whole country, you don't get to pick and choose. We're watching the Republican party attack each other, as the Trump hopes fade, and Trump runs out of people who haven't betrayed him in his mind. There are always fresh suckers to exploit, and most people who work for Trump end up used husks,...

“It's sad, though. Tchitcherine likes Slothrop. He feels that, in any normal period of history, they could easily be friends. People who dress up in bizarre costumes have a savoir-vivre—not to mention the sort of personality disorder—that he admires. When he was a little boy, back in Leningrad, Tchitcherine's mother sewed by hand a costume for him to wear in a school entertainment. Tchitcherine was the wolf. The minute he put on the head, in front of the mirror by the ikon, he knew himself. He was the wolf.” Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon