patrickbrianmooney

[patrickbrianmooney]

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Display of lighthouse glass at the maritime museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan. Fomapan 100 stand-developed in instant coffee and vitamin C. 3 June 2021. File no. 1249-29.

[patrickbrianmooney]

The first wave of interest in fascistic politics in Europe had been set off by the March on Rome in 1922, yet all efforts to form a new movement in imitation of Italian Fascism elsewhere had failed, partly because the prosperity of the 1920s did not encourage them. Whenever parliamentary liberalism had been overthrown in other countries, it had occurred at the hand of military coups in the less developed lands of southern and eastern Europe, the government of [Miguel] Primo de Rivera in Spain having been one of the first examples. Hitler's accession to power in German on 30 January 1933 touched off a second and much more powerful wave of interest in fascistic politics. By this time radical authoritarian ideas had been more widely disseminated in Europe, and the depression crisis made nationalists and antileftists much more receptive to a categorically authoritarian alternative.

Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Europe, 1923-77, ch. 4

[patrickbrianmooney]

So the fact that the Mass Dems have a robust platform and one of the most, if not the most, progressive platforms in the country should be a point of pride. But it raises the question: Does it even mean anything?

A platform is, in theory, an actionable agenda for a party, a promise of what that party will do when in office. But the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform says quite little about what our Legislature’s large Democratic majorities intend to do.

[patrickbrianmooney]

But humans, inherent problem-solvers that we are, chafe at problems that cannot be solved, questions that cannot ever, once and for all, satisfactorily be put to rest: the assassination of President Kennedy, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the Wow! signal, Casper Hauser, the Voynich manuscript, the identity of Jack the Ripper. Just for example. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I got a million of 'em. The mind balks at the idea that these mysteries will never be solved. Which, of course, has no bearing on their solvability. All the king's horses and all the king's men are for naught. Wishing ain't getting. In his heart of hearts, the Signalman knows this is gospel. But his job is, all the same, to pursue answers for the Powers That Be, the powerbrokers, the gatekeepers. And in the absence of answers, he's learned to settle for the doubtful consolation of necessary fictions. He is, above all, a practical man. Whatever idealism he once might have harbored was sacrificed a long, long time ago. Scar tissue stiffens and numbs the inquisitorial soul.

Caitlin R. Kiernan, Agents of Dreamland (2017), ch. 11

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Snow on train tracks, graffiti on grain silos, in south Minneapolis's grain-mill district, just off of highway 55. 10 January 2024. Film Ferrania P30 exposed at box speed and stand-developed in dilute Kodak HC-110. File no. 1412-14A.

[patrickbrianmooney]

Was it ever more tolerable? you may ask. Was there ever less suffering, less injustice, less exploitation? There can be no such audits. It is necessary to recognize that the intolerability of the world is, in a certain sense, an historical achievement. The world was no intolerable so long as God existed, so long as there was the ghost of a pre-existent order, so long as large tracts of the world were unknown, so long as one believed in the distinction between the spiritual and the material (it is there that many people still find their justification in finding the world tolerable), so long as one believed in the natural inequality of man.

John Berger, “Image of Imperialism” (1968), collected in Understanding a Photograph (2013)

[patrickbrianmooney]

Although it is unclear whether, or how, Trump might expand migrant detention at Guantánamo, administration officials have already received a head start from someone else: former president Joe Biden.

[patrickbrianmooney]

They marched him out the front office. When they passed Brice in the hall, she looked away, pretending not to notice. The front desk was abandoned, everyone suddenly called to the restroom or a coffee break at the same moment. None of the people he worked with would actually see him leave. That's how quickly the right kinds of power could make someone disappear. Walking out the front door for what he had to assume was the last time, it felt like an epiphany. He'd wondered, watching the newsfeeds, how so many could go missing in a station with people and cameras everywhere. He understood now.

James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes, ch. 40

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Snow on train tracks in south Minneapolis's grain-mill district, just off of highway 55. 10 January 2024. Film Ferrania P30 exposed at box speed and stand-developed in dilute Kodak HC-110. File no. 1412-18A.

[patrickbrianmooney]

In defense of the Dictatorship, José Antonio insisted shrilly that all that really mattered was Spanish unity and a strong nationalist government. 'Don't hold back before any superstition or even the shrieking of the vestal virgins of legality! ... We must say: "Save Spain, even if all constitutional principles perish!"' Later, on 5 October, he proclaimed in Bilbao that Spain was faced with its greatest challenge in centuries: 'There are only two paths in these transcendent moments: either revolution or counterrevolution. Either our traditional order or the triumph of Moscow.'

Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923-1977, ch 4.

[patrickbrianmooney]

Since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, Forensic Architecture has been collecting data related to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military. Our analysis of this conduct reveals the near-total destruction of civilian life in Gaza. We have also collected and analysed evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military directing Palestinian civilians to areas of Gaza designated as ‘safe’. These orders have resulted in the repeated, large-scale displacement of the Palestinian population across Gaza, often to areas which subsequently came under attack.

[patrickbrianmooney]

Now, at a maturer age, I can see that the health of character is securely tied to the health of an age; dissolution produces dissolution, betrayal betrayal, and trust is no neighbor for fear. But at that time, I still nourished a belief in the idea that personalities shape history, rather than vice versa.

Brian Aldiss, Earthworks (1965), ch. 10

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Snow on train tracks in south Minneapolis's grain-mill district, just off of highway 55. 10 January 2024. Film Ferrania P30 exposed at box speed and stand-developed in dilute Kodak HC-110. File no. 1412-11A.

[patrickbrianmooney]

Until the end of the eighteenth century, for a man to envisage his death as the possibly direct consequence of his choice of a certain course of action is the measure of his loyalty as a servant. This is true whatever the social station or privilege of the man. Inserted between himself and his own meaning there is always a power to which his only possible relationship is once of service or servitude. This power may be considered abstractly as Fate. More usually it is personified in God, King, or the Master. Thus the choice which the man makes (the choice whose foreseen consequences may be his own death) is curiously incomplete. It is a choice submitted to a superior power for acknowledgment. The man himself can only judge sub judice: finally it is he who will be judged. In exchange for this limited responsibility he received benefits. The benefits can range from a master's recognition of his courage to eternal bliss in heaven. But in all cases the ultimate decision and the ultimate benefit are located as exterior to his own self and life. Consequently death, which would seem to be so definitive an end, is for him a means, a treatment to which he submits for the sake of some aftermath. Death is like the eye of a needle through which he is threaded. Such is the mode of his heroism. The French Revolution changed the nature of heroism. (Let it be clear that I do not refer to specific courages: the endurance of pain or torture, the will to attack under fire, the speed and lightness of movement and decision in battle, the spontaneity of mutual aid under danger—these courages must be largely defined by physical experience and have perhaps changed very little. I refer only to the choice which may precede these other courages.) The French Revolution brings the King to judgment and condemns him.

John Berger, “Image of Imperialism” (1968), collected in Understanding a Photograph (2013)

[patrickbrianmooney]

The development is not catastrophic for the $15 minimum wage provision — if Harris simply uses her power to ignore the opinion and clear the path for the measure she has long insisted she supports.

The problem is that the White House is signaling she will do the opposite.

[patrickbrianmooney]

If there hadn't been so many fucking human beings stressing the food webs over the last few centuries, the system might have been more robust. Or it might not have. It wasn't as though they had a second Earth to use as a control. History itself was a massive n=1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from.

James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes (2016), ch. 38

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Snow falling in south Minneapolis's grain-mill district, just off of highway 55. 10 January 2024. Film Ferrania P30 exposed at box speed and stand-developed in dilute Kodak HC-110. File no. 1412-15A.