Very good Ted talk by Eric X. Li, A Tale of Two Political Systems, which may at first come off as propaganda for China's one party system and an indictment of democracy, but he makes it a point to point out that it isn't about coming to the conclusion of what the best political system for the entire world ought to be, in as much as he makes the point that perhaps a plurality of political systems, whether they be old, current, or new may be more apt.
“The gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed along remains abundant.”
— Lewis Hyde
Finally scheduled the new newsletter. This one took a lot out of me.
It goes out in a few hours. Sign up, as always, is at Ganzeer.com/Newsletter
Inbox 237, RSS 438. Terrible.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” said the Earth followed by a sinister laugh.
She was bruised and visibly ill, but still stood tall. She wasn't proud of this, not really. She'd held back doing anything like it for a long time, but she was at her wit's end and found no other way.
She shook her head and retreated into the embrace of the universe, muttering no more than two words: “Puny humans.”
(Uncredited photo from Valencia following unprecedented floods.)
“One could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat ('Huron') confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion. Kandiaronk was widely hailed by French observers as the most brilliant logician and wittiest debater anyone had ever met (one slightly irritated Jesuit wrote, 'No one has perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity'), and a book based on notes from these debates later became a best seller across Europe.”
From HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: Democracy's indigenous origins in the Americas – By David Graeber and David Wengrow
“If you are ready to be ashamed of your own country, this is the first step towards freedom today.”
— Slavoj Zizek, How to become Free
“Miss Lonelyhearts drank steadily. He was smiling an innocent, amused smile, the smile of an anarchist sitting in the movies with a bomb in his pocket.”
From MISS LONELYHEARTS by Nathaniel West.
To have an inner life without an outer one is just as bad as having an outer life without an inner one.
On Charles Dickens' Unfinished Murder Mystery – “Since shortly after Dickens’s death in 1870, writers (and musical theater playwrights) have attempted to pick up where he left off, trying to solve the novel’s central murder themselves and write an acceptable second half and ending. The strangest, though, was published in 1873, by an American printer named Thomas Power James. He claimed that the spirit of Charles Dickens had appeared to him and dictated the rest of the novel through him, and published a full version of the novel. Arthur Conan Doyle, noted spiritualist, found credence in this, and endorsed this “ghostwritten” continuation, saying that Dickens’s style remained consistent throughout the story. This edition endured in America far longer than it should have.”
Lily Allen says she earns more money from selling feet pictures than Spotify streams – “Imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet. don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
Inbox 192, RSS 310. Had intended on firing up the newsletter this weekend, but a migraine got the better of me yesterday.