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常言道，生活就是一面镜子，你对它怎样，它就对你怎样。

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與高中同學一杯接一杯的乾了，那些被生活打敗的熱情，卻怎麼也數不完。當年的我們，沒想過如何與時間鬥爭。唯當頂上稀疏，小腹微凸，才發現青春帝國一吋吋失守。反覆咀嚼十七、八歲的往事，世界隨著暈茫。子夜潮水緩慢退去，我說，這是我們的南方。

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薄情　◎游善鈞 ⠀ 我們在情緒的死角 討論生活的方式 了解所有傾斜的角度裡 都有一個被擰成螺絲釘的人

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“If you’re willing to sacrifice you never have to compromise, and I’m proud to say we did very little compromising over the last nine years. That does unfortunately mean we did a lot of sacrificing, and after a while that becomes unsustainable.”

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小地方小城市就是这样，一旦选定方向是不大可能改变的。

如果说拒绝是本能，但是还有一种比本能更强大的东西，这东西也可以说是更深层的本能：那就是服从，因为服从的背后有许多东西。

还有什么比钱更能击中人的软处呢？

书构成���自我与传统构成的自我有时候还是不能比似，换句话说我的头号问题是我父辈的问题，祖父的问题，干脆说是文化基因的问题，即恐惧。当然了更是杨修的问题。杨修不仅是杨修，杨修虽只是某种系统的一个零件，但却有着整个系统的自负，许多时候他不是自己在说话而是系统在说话，这点他自己已经分不清。

我们这个时代是一个品性与学养分开的时代，甚至无关的时代。这方面古人要好得多，修身齐家治国平天下，人是统一的。现在不同，多数人的只是越来越技术化、专门化，后果之一就是统一性遭到破坏。

杜远方也总是不完全站在自己的角度说话，他们习惯了某种东西，也成为某种东西的化身，一说话就不由自主带出来。

“。。。幸好你是自由撰稿人，不在体制内，在我估计你也是比较恶心的那部分。但如果你真想知道我可以该诉你，我不隐瞒，没必要撒谎，我完全可以直截了当。你号称文人 - 自由撰稿人？这个提法真可笑-- 我就把你看做是文人吧。过去，一般说，在最不好的文人那里也会记录下什么，比如野史。你知道什么叫野史吗？这个，当年在我们学历史专业里并没解决，也没人真正说清楚。现在，在这里，我告诉你：野史，其实就是当时比较差的文人做的一些记录，是一些上不了台的东西，与《左转》、《资治通鉴》、二十四史，根本没法比。杨修真正地让我不寒而栗了，这家伙要是在大学做学问也会有大成，幸亏他走上了仕途。

“但是，我要告诉你的不是那个，是这个，野史偶然记录的一些东西也有偶然的价值，我要告诉你的你要记下来应该属此列。你的问题很原始，你用一种简单地方式问了一个复杂的问题，这和普通老百姓没什么区别，不过这倒也符合你的民间野史趣味。你有两万册书或者三万册书，你还是老百姓，你根本没在本质里待过。你读了那么多书，所有的东西都带有似是而非的性质，现在你明白我为什么说你民间野史了吧？你的“限”很清楚，和有多少书没关系。

我不得不在此环视了一下他的书房。

“我记得，我们上大学时一个先生提到过一些西方史学流派用一个词的方式进入历史、进入问题，你这样进入过吗？先生提到有一本叫《词与物》的书，是一种新的史学视野-别以为我当官了就不看书，我还是看一些的-当然，论读书这点，我不和你比，不过你脑子这么混乱，真不一定比我强。很多时候书读得越多脑子越乱，毛说的‘书读得越多越愚蠢’也就是这个意思。你没有自己的人生经验，全是书上的经验，怎么不阅读越愚蠢？越多越蠢？我根据自己的经验阅读，读得不多，但每读比是心中已有，非常切中，非常清晰，包括你这种文人都非常清晰。我为什么给你和死刑犯生活在一起提供特别方便-没有我特批的权利根本不可能的-就是想让你脑子有些货真价实的东西。我对你寄予希望，无论如何比起那些太差的人你还是有希望的。可是你整天坐在个破轮椅上阅读能有什么希望？不是越读越废？这不就是自残？和自残有什么区别？”

事儿是绝对的，关键是如何运用事儿，和使用。

他的镜头感相当强，这方面他似乎有着演员的自恋与天赋，只要是镜头，不管什么镜头，哪怕监控镜头，他都在乎别人怎么看自己，他都要想给别人什么印象。

蓝对老师说，一个人的绝对自由意味着另一个人的绝对不自由 - 绝对不自由就是爱，她愿用绝对不自由的爱换取老师绝对的爱。

他们的专业深入了他们的骨髓，挤占了他们的感情空间，甚至性生活空间。

我可是老萝卜了，几十年的萝卜了，是你们种下的萝卜，拔了我带出多少泥你们难道不知道？不说别的你们有多少套房子是我送的，你们得股票是怎么像魔术一样？

我问杜远方为什么不能急流勇退，比如在他最安全，最辉煌的时候？“退？没有退路！这个企业我经营了快三十年得有多大的罪？一退下来马上就会有人搞你，与其退下被人搞不如在台上被人搞，可以随时有力地反击。我反击过许多次，没人能在台上打到我。”

中国最需要的是什么？是经济，经济不翻身一切无从谈起。现在国家似乎也想明白了，要以经济为中心，不再以政治为中心。

他让居延泽去财政处考虑的是一个企业最核心的不是技术，不是产品，不是销售，而是财务。财务可以最直接地从经济角度看问题，财务的运行即包含计划也包含市场，包含销售、资本运作，透过财务可以最透澈地看到企业内部最具体的运行。

杜远方的那种霸气又有分寸感让居延泽觉得一切都不简单，男女，权利，地位，占有欲，人，特别是男人没有比在饥饿的欲望与悬殊的野心之时更敏感到无望的痛苦。诚惶诚恐之时就是想入非非之时，内心倒塌之时正是望到一线天之时。

居延泽认为欲望与理想如果保持80年代那样子最好的，那时理想有欲望的笛子有一种拼劲儿，欲望有理想罩着不会太赤裸裸，太原教旨。居延泽不是没有认识，但正如他说的，认识是一回事，做是另一回事。

其实什么是文化？在我看来就是欲望与理想的相互映照，就是这两样东西。

杜远方身上有这种东西，李离也有，居延泽也有，80年代的人差不多都有着这两种东西。只是杜远方与李离更突出，关系复杂，有利用的关系，有合作的关系，有上下级的关系，有感恩，有知遇，有爱，有怨，有真情，有野心，总之那时是混合的，有更多心灵的参与。

杜远方大笑，那是他根本想不到如此青涩缺乏经验的居延泽已着迷了李离最初的暗示，并且还在时时接受某种信息。他的恍惚、紧张、失措有相当的成分也是来自李离给予的令他激动地女性信息。

羞涩，慌乱，大胆，杜远方感到居延泽的可造。

办公室政治从来就是这样，什么是都要先想着领导，哄着领导。

一个集体有时就像一个人，一群羊常常就像一只羊，居延泽读历史时就发现过这个问题，没想到现实甚至就在自己的身边依然有这么深的基础。群羊总是维护着头羊，单个的羊没有地位，集体的羊也没有。单个的羊必须强大，必须有自己的主体，必须成为它自己 - 居延泽接受那个年代大学里流行的启蒙观点，也就是个人主义的观点，但实际却得出了另一种结论，走上了另一条路：寻找一切机会，哪怕需要暂时放弃一个人也要让将来的自己强大；尽量少围着别人，让别人围着自己。

这种马屁有水平，因为一多半是真的，一多半真的马屁是好马屁。是陈姐的提议，自自然然，恰到好处。当然也不排除另有深意，一种倾向总是掩盖着另一种倾向，有时连自己也不是特别清楚这种倾向。

《绿岛小夜曲》非常抒情，亲密，乃至私密。与《橄榄树》不同，两人唱得亦非常轻，摇曳，忘我，想夜晚的两朵摆动的花。杜远方会听说什么吗？居延泽无所谓，一个实习生，李离危险了，如果再真的发生了什么。。。两人情不自禁地投入，谁都看出一种可能的东西。特别是李离，一丝不苟的反面可能就是不顾一切。这就是李离。是潜流���陈姐看到的别人也都看到了，但同时发出的赞美任是真实的，发自内心的，而且是主要的。有时我们不必夸大生活中的某些片刻的潜流，潜流否定不了主流，许多时候甚至可以忽略不计。当然，有时蛛丝马迹又有决定意义。这就是生活的真谛，是阴谋论不能主宰生活的原因。

然而燃烧过的东西往往更容易燃烧，死灰复燃往往再容易不过，有时候想躲过什么反而一定撞上，或一定走到那儿去。

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In the world of nation-states, collective memory becomes part of constant recuperation of nationalism. The tenacity of nationalism derives from its practices to define nation in terms of its “internal frontier” that constitutes the putatively invisible and elastic “essence” of a people, which enables perpetual redefinition of nation accord- ing to changing historical circumstances (Balibar 1991; Stoler 1995). The “essence” of national identity, such as “Japaneseness,” is an “empty signifier” whose content can be resignified over and again (Barthes [1957] 1987; Laclau and Mouffe [1985] 2001) through reconstruction of memories of who “we the people” have been. Here, this recuperative operation of nationalism into which collective memory is recruited can be conceptualized as reiterated problem solving, where actors select one way of remembering rather than another.

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on the way forward for sg........wtf this para is sick

In the first place, it is questionable whether the fusion of horizons can ever remove or reduce ethnocentricity when the initial horizon is already conditioned by colonial racialization and ethnic pluralism, through which each constituent ethnic identity recognizes itself only in a mirroring effect with other ethnic identities recognized by the state. Furthermore, as implied by the last assertion, the horizon does not reside in the independent public sphere but in the public domain of the state. Given this ethnocentric, bureaucratic, and authoritarian anchoring of postcolonial multiculturalism, I question the usefulness of bringing less scripted identities into the field of public recognition, as it seems only to lead postcolonial societies down the slope of cultural totalitarianism, where cultural identities can only be recognized within the ambit of the state and practiced in the institutionalized spaces of the state. The presumption of independent prepublic cultural identity by liberal multiculturalism does not therefore work in postcolonial societies where state recognition ascribes one’s primary identity and leaves out the others as private and irrelevant to the making of public demands, rendering these irrelevant identities morally problematic and even politically seditious if they do make public demands. (Daniel Goh)

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Feminism has a long, complicated relationship to sex, one that has cycled from embrace to critique and back again. By the time a generation of women woke feminism from its backlash slumber around the millennium, the sex wars of the 1980s were long over. Some second-wave feminists, including Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, had seen sex, pornography, and sexism as all of a piece, finding it impossible to pick the strands of pleasure from the suffocating fabric of oppression. So-called sex-positive feminists — Ellen Willis, Joan Nestle, Susie Bright — set themselves against what they saw as this puritanical slant. The sex-positive crusaders won the war for a million reasons, perhaps especially because their work offered optimism: that sexual agency and equality were available to women, that we were not destined to live our sexual lives as objects or victims, that we could take our pleasures and our power too. They won because sex can be fun and thrilling and because, for the most part, human beings want very badly to partake of it.

So it was only natural that when feminism was resurrected by young women creating a new movement, it was self-consciously sex friendly, insouciant in its approach to the signs and symbols of objectification. No one would ever mistake these feminists for humorless harridans or frigid dick-rejectors. But the underpinning philosophy had shifted slightly. Sex positivity was originally a term used to describe a theory of women, sex, and power; it advocated for any kind of sexual behavior — from kink to celibacy to conscious power play — that women might enjoy on their own terms and not on terms dictated by a misogynistic culture. Now it has become shorthand for a brand of feminism that was a cheerleader for, not a censor of, sex — all sex. Feminism’s sexual focus narrowed in on one issue: coercion and violence. Sex that took place without clear consent wasn’t even sex; it was rape.

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“The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. The ‘right’ to signify from the periphery of authorized power and privilege does not depend on the persistence of tradition; it is resourced by the power of tradition to be rein scribed through the conditions of contingency and contradictoriness that attend upon the lives of those who are ‘in the minority’. The recognition that tradition bestows is a partial form of identification. In restating the past it introduces other, incommensurable cultural temporalities into the invention of tradition. This process estranges any immediate access to an originary identity or a ‘received’ tradition. The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definition of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress.” Homi Bhabha (1994)

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Against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.

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“On November 10 The New York Times reported that nearly seven in ten Republicans prefer America as it was in the 1950s, a nostalgia of course entirely unavailable to a person like me, for in that period I could not vote, marry my husband, have my children, work in the university I work in, or live in my neighborhood. Time travel is a discretionary art: a pleasure trip for some and a horror story for others. Meanwhile some on the left have time travel fancies of their own, imagining that the same rigid ideological principles once applied to the matters of workers’ rights, welfare, and trade can be applied unchanged to a globalized world of fluid capital.”

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Highlights from Khole #4: Youth Mode

It used to be possible to be special — to sustain unique differences through time, relative to a certain sense of audience. As long as you were different from the people around you, you were safe. But the Internet and globalization fucked this up for everyone.

Belonging to your generation becomes an inescapable truth

At the same time, responsibility for generational behavior is partial at the max.

Demography is dead, yet marketers will quietly invent another generation on demand.

Youth isn’t freedom in any political sense. It’s an emancipation from boredom, from prescription, from tradition. It’s the fullness of potential, the ability to be the person you want to be. It’s about the freedom to choose how you relate; the freedom to choose how you understand; the freedom to try new things; the freedom to make mistakes. Youth understands freedom with limits

Mass Indie ditched the Alternative preoccupation with evading sameness and focused on celebrating difference instead.

In this scenario, mastering difference is a way of neutralizing threats and accruing status within a peer group.

But just because Mass Indie is pro-diversity, doesn’t mean it’s post-scarcity. There’s a limited amount of difference in the world, and the mainstreaming of its pursuit has only made difference all the scarcer. The anxiety that there is no new terrain is always a catalyst for change.

All of their high-res decisions were for naught and their startups went full circle back to basic.

You’ve been working so hard at being precise that the micro-logic of your decisions is only apparent to an ever-narrowing circle of friends.

But after you graduate, you realize no one gives a fuck besides your PhD advisor. This is the story of the world’s most exasperated Subway employee.

Teens become Internet famous then immediately delete their accounts.

It’s a delicate balance between FOMO and DGAF.

The most different thing to do is to reject being different all together. When the fringes get more and more crowded, Mass Indie turns toward the middle. Having mastered difference, the truly cool attempt to master sameness.

Acting Basic is not a solution to Mass Indie problems because it’s still based on difference. Sameness is not mastered, only approached.

Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.

Normcore wants the freedom to be with anyone.

In Normcore, one does not pretend to be above the indignity of belonging.

Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness. But instead of appropriating an aestheticized version of the mainstream, it just cops to the situation at hand. To be truly Normcore, you need to understand that there’s no such thing as normal.

-post-aspirational

Normcore capitalizes on the possibility of misinterpretation as an opportunity for connection — not as a threat to authenticity.

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It is widely documented that Soviet experts implemented some ill- conceived large-scale projects at enormous human and environmental cost, many of which dated back to Stalin’s period, such as Magnitogorsk, the White Sea Ca- nal, and Norilsk.

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Politician’s guide: how to produce Dodgy Statistics (David Spiegelhalter)

1. Use a real number, but change its meaning 

2. Make the number look big (but not too big) 

3. Casually imply causation from correlation 

4. Choose your definitions carefully 

5. Use total numbers rather than proportions (or whoever way suits your argument) 

6. Don’t provide any relevant context 

7. Exaggerate the importance of a possibly illusionary change 

8. Prematurely announce the success of a policy initiative using unofficial selected data 

9. If all else fails, just make the number up

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the nature of post-invasion Iraqi “democracy” is established in a way to preserve American control of its commercial sphere via thwarted political institutions and processes.  

It is important to bring this article to light now because this is essentially one of the biggest causes of the so-called “terrorism” threatening global security. 

The domination of Iraqi politics by US corporate interest. 

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But the dream, though still alive, is now in peril. A growing number of legal experts are challenging the legitimacy of Bremer's reforms, arguing that under the international agreements that govern occupying powers - the Hague regulations of 1907 and the Geneva conventions of 1949 - the CPA can only act as a caretaker of Iraq's economic assets, not its auctioneer. Radical changes - such as Bremer's order 39, which opened up Iraqi industry to 100% foreign ownership - violate these agreements and so could be easily overturned by a sovereign Iraqi government.

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Under the Party umbrella, there is room for professional associations – but only at the top end of the scale. There’s a Chinese Medical Association, but no China Plumber’s Association. Even within those bodies, though, far more value is put on sticking to the official line than in creating a peer group. As the medical journalist Michael Woodhead has pointed out, in the West doctors have clear professional guidelines, and review bodies to keep them on the straight-and-narrow; in China they have only the flickering lamp of their own conscience.