Motley | Wally @ Motley

Wally

bolditalic@motley.club

I'm a frequent and eclectic thinker with an attention span demonstrably shorter than most of what I might write about. I delight in the deep and fertile ground of #Indigenous wisdom, ways of knowing, story and #folklore.

I love #Gardening, homegrown #Cannabis, #Yoga. #Permaculture curious.

I want to be done with the wrong story that lead to empire and capitalism, and I want to encourage their demise while I steward the return of ways of living that are connected to Place. Short supply chains are their own reward.

There are externalized costs to comfort and convenience.

Oregon, USA

Wally reshared this.

Szymon Sokół 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦

3 months ago •

Szymon Sokół 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦
3 months ago •

Don't know the author, but (s)he is right to the point.

While you were so worried that Socialism would take your freedoms, Capitalism stole your pension, took your savings, destroyed the climate, shipped your job overseas, robbed you of health care, dismantled the educational system, and shackled you with debt, leaving you only your racism, xenophobia, patriarchy and guns.

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Wally reshared this.

Paul Fairie

6 months ago •

Paul Fairie
6 months ago •

Newspaper in 1924 writing to historians in 2024

If the historian of the year 2024 should consult the files of the daily press of 1924 he will not be to blame if he concludes that at this time our nation was governed by a venal cabinet; that all our politicians were grafters; that the heads of all our oil corporations were crooks, and that the leading industry of the United States was bootlegging.
--Casper Daily Tribune, 25 March 1924

Wally reshared this.

StillIRise1963

6 months ago •

StillIRise1963
6 months ago •

You have to get comfortable with the concept that much of what you've learned, in every category, may have no basis in truth because it was born of or is tainted by white supremacy.

2 people reshared this

Wally reshared this.

Delia Christina

6 months ago •

Delia Christina
6 months ago •

For most of us, if not all of us, there is literally nothing we can do to stop what is happening in #Gaza

But the *very least* we can do is be a witness to what is happening and to see it CLEARLY.

Because when this is over (whatever 'over' will look like), the Powerful will tell us that what we saw was NOT what we saw. They will try to erase the fact these people existed and had a right to exist. They had a right to be free.

They HAVE a right to be free.

I'm overwhelmed and overcome because there's only so much trauma we can bear. But WE, here in the U.S., are bearing *nothing* compared to what our Palestinian neighbors are bearing.

To look away is a comfort+privilege.

#Gaza

Wally reshared this.

Maria Popova

6 months ago •

Maria Popova
6 months ago •

As October breathes the first chill into the air of our lives, an illustrated field guide to the art, science, and joy of tea https://t.co/b5PSUfeSI0

An Illustrated Field Guide to the Art, Science, and Joy of Tea

From leaf to cup, by way of the history of human civilization.

^{The Marginalian}

Wally reshared this.

baptiste

6 months ago •

@tea

@tea group

Wally reshared this.

Micro SF/F by O. Westin

7 months ago •

Micro SF/F by O. Westin
7 months ago •

I noticed a new god in the temple.

"Who are you offering to?" it asked.

I listed them all, the gods of rising bread, of health, and all the others.

"Offer to me only, and I will share with all of them."

It was convenient, but now there is only one god, and my bread will not rise.
#SmallStories #MicroFiction #TootFic

#microfiction #tootfic #smallstories

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

2 people like this

Wally reshared this.

Maria Popova

7 months ago •

Maria Popova
7 months ago •

“Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself… When you are able to say, ‘I am … my shadow as well as my light,’ the shadow’s power is put in service of the good.”

This is wonderful: https://t.co/jc39XEDSbk

The Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life: Parker Palmer’s Spectacular Naropa University Commencement Address

“Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself… When you are able to say, ‘I am all of the above, my shadow as well as my ligh…

^{The Marginalian}

Wally reshared this.

Sascha Freudenheim

7 months ago •

Thank you for this! Really lovely (and a great mood-setter as I head to synagogue for Yom Kippur services).

Marcus Reynolds

7 months ago •

I'm surprised the Republicans have not found a way to take this down from the internet yet.

Wally reshared this.

Biped Earthling

7 months ago •

Biped Earthling
7 months ago •

A Tale of Two Cities.

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

Hypolite Petovan likes this.

Wally reshared this.

Madhouse Muse 😷🦋

7 months ago •

Madhouse Muse 😷🦋
7 months ago •

Paul Simon says he suffered sudden hearing loss while recording his new album, making it unlikely that he will ever be able to tour or perform live again.

"He recently survived a severe bout of COVID-19, which has been linked to sudden irreversible hearing loss in some patients."

#Covid #Covid19 #SarsCov2 #LongCovid #music

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/paul-simon-hearing-loss-covid-seven-psalms-18117021

Paul Simon unlikely to perform live again due to sudden hearing loss

“My generation’s time is up,” said the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame musician.

^{Aidin Vaziri (Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide)}

#COVID19 #music #COVID #SARSCoV2 #LongCOVID

Wally reshared this.

Yogthos

7 months ago •

Yogthos
7 months ago •

no: anywhere from 70-90% of corporate servers are said to be using Linux as an OS

yes: free open source software has unintentionally become the largest transfer of wealth produced by volunteer labour to the capitalist class in human history

sofia ☮️🏴

7 months ago •

well, it makes about as much sense as thinking that unlicensed copying is stealing…

i guess it would also mean that public goods are impossible.

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

7 months ago •

boosting this reply in agreement even while still convinced that OP is right and yet another example of the Freedom Monster at work

Wally reshared this.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

HeavenlyPossum
7 months ago •

Thousands of years ago, people were experimenting with all sorts of complex, dense social forms. Over 11,000 years ago, at Göbekli Tepe in what is now Turkey, people were erecting some of the world’s first monumental stone architecture. 11,000 years ago at Jericho, in Palestine, people were settling in one of the world’s first cities. At Çatalhöyük, also in Turkey, people 9,000 years ago built a complicated, honeycomb-like city. 5 to 6,000 years ago, people in what is now Ukraine built sprawling settlements. People were experimenting with urban life, with agriculture, with writing and all sorts of new phenomena.

Then, a little more than 5,000 years ago, in what is now southern Iraq, something entirely new began to emerge in some of the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia: the state.

1/#thread

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk_period

Wally reshared this.

35 comments - Show more

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

In places like Uruk and Ur and Egypt, the unmistakable signs of states first appeared. City walls. Opulent inhabited by rulers. Temples inhabited not just by priests, but also vast armies of slaves and wage laborers toiling in workshops. Slavery, war, and conquest. Literate bureaucrats who collected taxes and recorded payments and debts. Conscription, imprisonment, and massive public works.

Virtually all of the features of the modern state, with which we’re so intimately familiar, can be traced back to that initial development in the Bronze Age Near East.

One of the most common objections to anarchism that I encounter seems based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the state actually is.

The state is not, as many people seem to think, a synonym for generic human political organization. It’s not another way of referring to social or political complexity. It’s something fairly specific, but so pervasive now that it can easily seem like a natural condition, just another part of the background noise of our lives.

2/

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

Max Weber, a German sociologist who lived from 1864 to 1920, famously connected the state to a monopoly on violence. Here’s what he wrote in his work “Economy and Society”:

“A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a 'state' insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.”

This is not a perfect or complete definition of the state, and indeed nothing could be—I think “state-ness” is something that probably exists on a spectrum. But there are some really important insights here.

First is that the state is a political organization (or network of organizations) that enforces an order: it’s a group of people, which endures over time and not just temporarily, that creates rules for other people.

Second, that organization uses violence to enforce its rules. Fail to obey the state’s rules, and the state will send someone to hurt you.

Third, it doesn’t... show more

German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist (1864-1920)

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

But states don’t just create rules and enforce them violently. They’re not simply dispassionate judges, sitting atop society to preserve order for the public’s benefit. Every single state that exists or has existed uses those rules and that violence to do roughly four big things:

- collect resources from the people under its jurisdiction;

- define a territory that it controls and police its boundaries;

- administer its territory and subject population; and

- mobilize the labor of people under its jurisdiction for the state’s purposes.

Lots of different kinds of social organizations engage in one or more of these activities. A temple might collect tithes; a forager band might patrol its territory. But put them all together and you have something very state-like; marry that to a monopoly on violence and you have the state.

4/

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

Some people seem to think that anarchist critiques of the state are critiques of any human social or political organization, which is too absurd to deserve much of a response. But there are lots of people who recognize the state for what it is—an authority that uses violence to compel obedience to its rules—and believe that this violent inequality is the price we have to pay for social complexity.

This is not true, and we know this from a growing body of archeological and historical evidence about past societies that were stateless but complex, in addition to what we know about existing, modern societies that manage complexity outside of the state.

In those megasites of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture of Ukraine, in the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, in the towns and cities of Mesopotamia before the state, we keep finding all the signs of social complexity and urban life that we’d recognize and value today: economic specialization, writing, complex public infrastructure, long-distance trade, divers peoples living together without violence, uni... show more

Why Are Archaeologists Unable to Find Evidence for a Ruling Class of the Indus Civilization? - resilience

The Indus Valley was egalitarian not because it lacked complexity, but rather because a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity. It challenges us to rethink the fundamental connections between collective action and inequality.

^{Resilience (Resilience.org)}

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

There are lots of theories about how the state emerged, but one that I find particularly satisfying is described in James Scott’s book “Against the Grain.”

We know that people in places like Mesopotamia were already living in urban settlements and experimenting with agriculture and writing thousands of years before the first state. The marshlands of southern Iraq were incredibly ecologically diverse and rich, and sustained dense populations of foragers who also toyed with agriculture, casually tossing handfuls of seeds in the rich mud left by the annual river floods and returning months later to leisurely gather the resulting grains.

These dense, food-rich, settled communities were neighbors to peoples who would occasionally raid and pillage these communities. They must have been inviting targets, having done the foragers’ work of hunting and gathering for them.

So what if, we can speculate, one of these raiding peoples decided that, rather than periodically attack, they would set themselves up on top of the settled communities? What if... show more

violetmadder

7 months ago •

Very likely.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

In his essay “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” written long before this archeological evidence was available, American sociologist conjectured essentially the same thing.

In the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, we saw bands of mounted warriors attach themselves to settler agrarian communities and offer their services for “protection” in a manner identical to what we’re familiar with from the Mafia today.

These early modern states were rudimentary but recognizable as states: they had elite authorities who set rules, monopolized violence, and extracted resources. But they faced a problem: neighboring states wanted to expand into their territory, and they wanted to expand into their neighbors’ territory, to grow richer. So they fought wars. Lots of wars.

But war is enormously expensive, from feed for horses to blacksmiths for armor to merchants to provide food on campaign. So these early states were forced to seek ever more elaborate mechanisms for extracting resources to provision armies in... show more

book by James C. Scott

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

Quite a few people I encounter express some variation of the idea that “the state, however objectionable, provides valuable services.” It’s worth asking, though, which of those services, if any, *require* the state, and which are provided by the state in its effort to improve the efficiency of extracting resources and labor from its subjects.

Not every exploitive or violent hierarchy is a state, and we should not end our struggle with the state. An abusive, patriarchal family; an extractive, controlling religious cult. But the state is the prevailing and predominant hierarchy of power, violence, and exploitation in our lives, and it empowers and is indistinguishable from all the others.

Some could exist without the state, like the patriarchal family. Some would struggle, like white supremacy. Some couldn’t exist without the state at all, and indeed are indistinguishable from the modern state.

8/

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

The state commands, and the state extracts, and the state kills. The state does not provide.

To the extent that we experience the state providing us with anything, we’re receiving from people who were compelled by the state’s power to provide for us. Maybe those people would provide for us of their own volition. Maybe we could freely induce them to provide, in the absence of the state.

Lots of people have the illusion that states can be “democratic,” in the sense of comprising an entire community as an electorate (liberals) or a class (Marxists). This is simply not the case. A state can never be synonymous with the community over which it rules.

“The state…is not an abstraction floating above society and its members; it is a social institution, and, as such, a group of human beings, a section of society, organised in a particular way…wherever there is a state, there is always a group of human beings who stand in a different relationship to it from most members of society: not as the dominated, or the excluded, but as... show more

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

We can see this easily when we return to the issue of a monopoly over violence. I’ve had people try to argue that a Marxist state or a liberal democratic state is different from these more primitive, predatory states because these states represent or are managed by the body politic as a whole.

But what happens if two members of those societies disagree with each other about the use of violence, and try to use violence against each other? The state can only endorse one side of conflict; its monopoly over violence cannot be mobilized by two opposing sides, simultaneously, to further their incompatible goals.

The state can endorse one, or neither, but it cannot endorse both. It cannot mobilize its resources to both support and oppose Donald Trump’s coup attempt on January 6, 2021. For the state to exist as an authority over a society with a monopoly over the use of violence, someone must be empowered to decide when and how and against whom violence is mobilized and someone must submit to that violence.

We cannot have our cake and eat it too. The state... show more

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

We can see this readily when we investigate the extent to which even ostensible “democracies” ignore the preferences of voters in favor of the preferences and goals of elites allied to the state.

One study, published in 2014 by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, found exactly this:

“Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all. By contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy.”

States do not enact the preferences of their voters, even when they bother with elections, because states are not “democratic” in any meaningful sense of bottom-up, consensual self-rule through cooperation. States enact the preferences of the elites who make up the state or, increasingly in the modern world, elites who stand apart from but have wholly captured the state as their agent.

11/

... show more

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens - Volume 12 Issue 3

^{Cambridge Core}

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

In “Forms of brutality: Towards a historical sociology of violence,” Siniša Malešević observes that interpersonal violence varies from place to place and time to time, but in general has remained fairly low throughout human history. What *has* changed is the state’s ability to mobilize entire populations to conduct industrial warfare and murder; there is nothing like the Holocaust in the pre-modern historical record.

Not every act of violence is committed by a state; not every non-state society is free of violence or hierarchy. But every state is violent, as violence is one of the key defining aspects of the state. States exist to use violence to extract resources to facilitate more violence to empower the state to collect more resources. That is, at their heart, what they are.

It’s in this way that we can distinguish the state from, say, a non-state tribal community. Even if that tribe has a leader—many don’t or didn’t—that leader (a chief or a king or whatever) might only be able to command through pe... show more

Wally likes this.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

I don’t mean for this to be an exhaustive exploration of the nature of the state or its flaws. Lots of people have written lots about those. What I wanted to do here was introduce what I meant and did not mean, specifically, when I talked about the state.

I’m planning a few more threads about some of the complex, urban, but nonstate societies I mentioned above, and I wanted to be clear up front about how to distinguish the state from its alternatives. The state is not a synonym for a community, or a polity, or governance; it’s a specific institution of rule, violence, and extraction. We pay taxes for a reason: because the state wants our stuff or, more likely, the state wants us to labor for it or it’s (capitalist) allies, and taxes are a great way of mobilizing that labor. We don’t pay taxes to “pay our fair share” towards the common good. We don’t need the state for that or, well, for anything, really.

As always, if you appreciate my toots, you can support me at the link below, and stay tuned as I write more threads and... show more

Heavenly Possum

Hello! I am a leftist anarchist and I write about history, anthropology, sociology, and economics on the fediverse. Please consider supporting my work!

^{Buy Me a Coffee}

HistoPol (#HP)

7 months ago •

Sounds interesting and is not counter-intuitive.

Don't have the time to read the long paper, but glanced through it. Was looking for a country comparison.

My hypothesis would be that the direct democry of Switzerland should fare significantly better in these respects.

Would be very interesting to see, as we now have the tools to have a direct form of democracy in large countries.

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

7 months ago •

a lot of culture-war stuff seems to be about whether to weaponize the state to help or to hurt the patriarchal family

i can't really imagine a white supremacy in any form we understand it today that isn't proceeding from the state the way the spirit proceeds from the father

Ben Curthoys

7 months ago •

The SSC "review" (more, summary) of seeing like a state is very good: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@bencurthoys

The frustrating thing about SSC is that he would occasionally put genuine effort into thoughtful responses but he’s also a trans phobic white supremacist who explicitly created SSC to encourage people into the alt-right.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/old_scott_siskind_emails_which_link_him_to_the/

@Ben Curthoys

Ben Curthoys

7 months ago •

Yeah very much keep my distance from the rationalist thing whilst trying not to throw the occasional baby out with the bathwater.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@bencurthoys

His series on depression and the predictive processing model might have saved my life, but I can’t dip my toes in that water again

@Ben Curthoys

Claire-hime

7 months ago •

I was reading Lenin last night and he was talking about how according to Marx states basically exist to resolve contradictions between classes and it does seem consistent with that that states would emerge after an outside invading "class" would appear and try to subjugate the locals

Howard Chu @ Symas

7 months ago •

sorry but that narrative is laughable. You think any population could ever exist without a practice and means of defending itself? You think a bunch of agrarians in a rich river valley would just roll over and accept being ruled by a warlike invading neighbor? Even social animals have a ruling hierarchy and structured defense against attackers. The notion that states were created by invaders is pure nonsense.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

I’m not sure what your objection is; even many state societies, with armies and warmaking apparatuses, have been conquered by other state societies. Being conquered by someone else does not imply the absence of self-defense, only the failure of self-defense in specific circumstances.

Self-defense, even cooperative self-defense, does not require the coercive hierarchies of state power, as you seem to assume. No, not every society has rulers or a ruling hierarchy.

If you are aware of an alternative process of state formation that is *demonstrable from evidence* I’d love to hear it.

@Howard Chu @ Symas

Howard Chu @ Symas

7 months ago •

wolves and lions use violence to establish a group leader. Most herd animals as well.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

Setting aside that we’re talking about human society, and not wolf society; setting aside that this is a cartoonish analogy of human political structures that do not map to wolf or lion social structures…

It doesn’t matter. There have been and there are human societies without rulers or hierarchies of power. There have been and are complex urban societies without state rule. The failure of one community’s self-defense does not imply the absence of self-defense, and history is replete with examples of complex urban and agrarian societies being conquered by outsiders who establish themselves as new ruling elites.

I genuinely can’t figure out what your objection is other than a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of political freedom.

@Howard Chu @ Symas

Howard Chu @ Symas

7 months ago •

in every human society there have always been misfits too. Or mentally ill sociopaths/psychopaths. People who intentionally harm their neighbors/fellow citizens.

If a society doesn't have centralized rule enforcers, personal violence leads to reprisals, blood feuds that span generations and tear the society apart.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

“If a society doesn't have centralized rule enforcers, personal violence leads to reprisals, blood feuds that span generations and tear the society apart.”

Sometimes, this is true. More often, it’s not, because people are aware of the risk of destabilizing cycles of interpersonal violence and create institutions to deter or avoid that violence.

If you’d like to learn more about nonstate societies instead of just making things up, I’d be happy to provide you with sources to read at your convenience.

@Howard Chu @ Symas

Howard Chu @ Symas

7 months ago •

links to info are always appreciated. Your response above seems to presuppose a thoughtful, well educated population. Which coincidentally is also a prerequisite for a functional democracy. And at this point in history, sounds as plausible as "assume a smooth frictionless spherical cow."

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

I’m not presupposing anything; I’m reporting empirical observations about actual stateless societies. This isn’t conjectural; these are knowable facts from anthropology, archeology, sociology, and history. The vast majority of human societies in history have been stateless and most did not behave like you presuppose. This isn’t an opportunity to conjecture your way to an answer from first principles.

Start with:

Christopher Boehm’s “Reverse Dominance Hierarchies”

Pierre Clastres’ “Society Against the State”

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”

Adam Green’s “Killing the Priest King”

Peter Kropotkin, “Mutual Aid”

@Howard Chu @ Symas

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall’s “Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy” and Marshal Sahlin’s “Stone Age Economics” are two other good works that directly refute the idea that states are inevitable or necessary for managing interpersonal violence.

@Howard Chu @ Symas

Howard Chu @ Symas

7 months ago •

reality is that in any group of people, disagreements will arise. Without a neutral 3rd party, many disputes would never be resolved.

No matter what intricate ways one might devise to settle agreements, there will always be at least one party unsatisfied by the outcome, and unwilling to abide by a decision - unless forced to abide.

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@hyc

Yes. Disagreements exist, and so do unhappy people. Neither of these require or presuppose the state to manage them.

The state is not and could never be a neutral third party, and it does not exist or come into existence to manage disputes.

@Howard Chu @ Symas

Archival Blob

7 months ago •

how do we know writing was widespread? Do we have any estimates for literacy rates and demographic distribution of this skill in these apparently stateless societies?

HeavenlyPossum

7 months ago •

@Archival_Blob

People used cylinder seals to convey important information. Basically, it was a tiny carved cylinder. If you pressed it into clay and rolled it, it would create a unique impression. In the city-states of Mesopotamia, they were frequently used in the temple-complexes to seal containers of commodities for export. Slaves or wage laborers would mass produce commodities; scribes would seal them with clay and mark them with the cylinders, and then consumers could “read” the impressions and understand important information about the commodity (producer, quality, origin, etc).

Archeologist Adam Green has noted that they used these seals in the Indus Valley as well, but they were used at the individual household level, not just by a literate priestly class. They were used as a sort of “signature” to convey information back and forth among a much wider community without any central control.

They weren’t quite consuming... show more

form of seal used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

@Archival Blob

Baron Woke of Carlsberg

7 months ago •

fascinating, thank you.

Rhizomat

7 months ago •

Fantastic thread, thank you so much! Eloquently and succinctly put together much of my current thinking on these topics that I was unable to combine as neatly as you.
If I may ask a question: How/When do you see gerontocratic and especially patriarchal forms of hierarchy come into the picture and fit into early/current state formation/violence? And similarly subjugation/separation of "nature"; as Bookchin theorized that human/human subjugation was the foundation for exploiting "nature" or the (according to Bookchin) Marxist view that subjugation of nature was required for human/human exploitation?

Wally reshared this.

Camellia Tea Ceremony

7 months ago •

Camellia Tea Ceremony
7 months ago •

🐉THE RECLINING DRAGON💤

The 'Garyū-rō' (臥龍廊 'Reclining Dragon Corridor') is counted amongst the '7 Wonders of Eikan-dō' (七不思議).
Curling gently up the hillside like the spine of a dragon, the roofed staircase was constructed in 1504 without the use of a single nail.

Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji (永観堂禅林寺) traces its history to Shinshō (真紹 797–873), a pupil of Kūkai. Aspiring to found a temple for worship of the '5 Wisdom Buddhas', in 853 he was gifted the mansion of Fujiwara-no-Sekio to realise his dream.

Eikan-do's unusual 'curling' staircase is likened to a dragon at rest.

Eikan-do's 'reclining dragon' staircase.

The staircase is counted amongst Eikan-do's '7 Wonders'.

Wally reshared this.

Camellia Tea Ceremony

7 months ago •

At the base of the Garyū-rō (臥龍廊) is a basin known as 'Suikin-kutsu' (水琴窟 lit. 'water koto grotto').
When water is poured into the small opening the sound of trickling echoes melodiously within.

The design is simple...an upside pot sits above a basin of water.

#Kyoto #京都 #suikinkutsu #水琴窟 #waterkoto #Eikando #EikandoZenrinji #Japan

#japan #kyoto #京都 #suikinkutsu #水琴窟 #waterkoto #eikando #eikandozenrinji

curious ordinary reshared this.

Camellia Tea Ceremony

7 months ago •

Under Yōkan (永観 1033-1111), the 7th abbot, the temple's teachings leant towards Pure Land Buddhism (the Jōdo-shū sect would form at the end of the 12thC).
Yōkan, who cared deeply for the poor and sick, was also known as Eikan...which gave Zenrin-ji an additional name 'Eikan-dō'.

#Eikando #永観堂 #Kyoto #京都 #Japan

Eikan-do's famous pagoda, nestled on the mountainside above the temple.

Eikan-do is famed for its autumn reds and early summer greens.

Eikan-do's 'imperial messenger gate', only ever used by a representative of the emperor. More symbolic than practical, the gate has remained closed for most of its life.

One of the temple's many statues of Jizo.

#japan #kyoto #京都 #eikando #永観堂

Wally reshared this.

𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇

7 months ago •

𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇
7 months ago •

Back to School...

Two ways to do the school run.

An elementary school in North Carolina vs. one in #Holland ... 🧵

#holland

Wally reshared this.

Climate Psychology Alliance NA

8 months ago •

Climate Psychology Alliance NA
8 months ago •

Hey there!

#climate #ClimateJustice #climatediary #Climatepsychology and #ClimateCrisis folks -

this is Climate Psychology Alliance of North America's new mastodon account -

There seem to be some CPA-NA bots and impersonators out there - but this is really us!

Please follow!

#ClimateCrisis #climate #ClimateJustice #ClimateDiary #climatepsychology

Wally reshared this.

Thomas Kole

8 months ago •

Thomas Kole
8 months ago •

a Portrait of Tenochtitlan, my 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire is released!

I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I am really curious what all of you think.

Take a look:
http://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl

#tenochtitlan

a portrait of Tenochtitlan

a 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire

^{tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl}

#Tenochtitlan

3 people reshared this

Samhain Night

8 months ago •

Wow!

Vincent :coffeecup:

8 months ago •

Amazing work. Well done.

Wally reshared this.

TC 💚

8 months ago •

TC 💚
8 months ago •

Wild pumpkins drained of their spice by illegal poachers. Please demand ethically sourced #PumpkinSpice lattes. 😔 :bb:

#pumpkinspice

Wally reshared this.

Christian Schwägerl

8 months ago •

Christian Schwägerl
8 months ago •

Toxic male politicians or representatives like #Trump in US and #Rubiales in Spain should have to pay a hefty fine each time they claim there‘s a „witch hunt“ underway to get them. These are exactly the kind of guys who would have hunted down alleged „witches“ in past centuries because they simply hate strong, independent women. And now they hide behind this historic crime of powerful men against women in order to make themselves look innocent.

#trump #rubiales

Wally reshared this.

mhoye

8 months ago •

mhoye
8 months ago •

Re-upping this again: I wish more lefties could internalize the idea that hypocrisy is not a meaningful accusation to the right. Of course they're being hypocrites. That you are bound, by rules, standards, logic, human decency, some fundamental moral consistency, anything at all, and they are not? That is their conception of what power is, and why they seek it. So they can exercise power, without constraint, and you cannot.

That's the whole point.

Hypocrisy is the virtue-signaling of fascism.

2 people like this

2 people reshared this

Dan LK

8 months ago •

One of the most memorable scenes for me in Iain M. Banks' THE PLAYER OF GAMES is when an official in the Evil Space Empire explains to the protagonist that the whole point of having power is that other people have to follow rules you get to break, and I wish it were more widely understood that this has been the whole point of "conservatism" all along.

Wally reshared this.

HeavenlyPossum

8 months ago •

HeavenlyPossum
8 months ago •

I came across a first-hand account of somehow who escaped the fire in #Lahaina and she noted that many roads out of town were privately owned by sugar plantations and were chained shut.

She says people died in their cars trying to escape.

These people were murdered by #PrivateProperty.

All of those sugar plantations were enclosed by the Hawaiian monarchy and sold off to American colonists, who in turn overthrew the monarchy and cemented their control of the islands and their lands.

Dying because of a chained gate on land that was stolen from the Hawaiian people is as surely murder as if they’d been pushed into the flames.

#lahaina #PrivateProperty

2 people reshared this

EarthMomma

8 months ago •

I get that this is a tragic horrendous thing that happened but blaming a property owner, no matter how they got that property, is severely ridiculous.

Doña Estridencia

8 months ago •

watch me blame property owners

Photo of Marx with "deal with it" sunglasses

HeavenlyPossum

8 months ago •

I’m trying and failing to see a distinction between people dying because they can’t access private roads and people dying at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory because the owners locked the doors.

Private property is an assertion of a right to interfere with access, even unto a non-owner’s death. That’s the whole point of private property!

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

8 months ago •

increasingly convinced that the idea of private ownership of land is without exaggeration literally the single worst thing to have ever happened to life on earth

Juleselt

8 months ago •

@LaNaehForaday The US is the only developed country that has no public right of way thru private property. In the U.K. it's standard practice to allow public trespass thru property, including on roads.

The US has a strange mentality about 'private' property. Given the small size of these islands, no roads, regardless of where, should have been off limits to anyone. And this tragedy proves it.

@EarthMomma

EarthMomma

8 months ago •

@julescelt01

Yes in a perfect world, all things would happen perfectly. My point is blaming the sugarcane owners because they cordoned off their areas to keep people out of their cane are not at fault, no matter how they acquired their land..

@Juleselt

sidereal

8 months ago •

@LaNaehForaday @julescelt01 People put up gates when they didn't have to. Other people died because the gates were there. The people who put up the gates should be held responsible. What is so complicated about this?

If they weren't prepared to open the gates in an emergency... that is still their fault.

@EarthMomma @Juleselt

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

EarthMomma

8 months ago •

@sidereal When you own property you are allowed to put up gates. You do not have to be responsible for your gates when there is a wildfire. IDEALLY all gates would magically open exactly when they need to open HOWEVER people/corporations/business owners/ land owners ARE ALLWED TO PUT GATES ON THEIR PROPERTIES.

Just because there was a wild fire does not make them at fault for putting up gates on THEIR property. JFC

@sidereal

sidereal

8 months ago •

@julescelt01 @HeavenlyPossum @julieofthespirits If you put up barriers which prevent people from escaping from a fire, you are responsible for their deaths. I don't know how else to explain this. There is nothing particularly complex or nuanced about this.

@Doña Estridencia @HeavenlyPossum @Juleselt

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

8 months ago •

> There is nothing particularly complex or nuanced about this.

::laughs and laughs and laughs in real estate lawyer::

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

8 months ago •

okay i just saw the rest of this conversation and what you were responding to

i retract my derision

Juleselt

8 months ago •

There is a different way to think about private property. I've been a wildlands firefighter, Park Ranger, and Environmental scientist that has done field work. I can't count the number of times I've had to cross private property to access public lands. We actually had to carry multiple keys to access gates. That slows down response times for fires, to protect people and their property. And when we were hindered, property owners blamed us.

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

8 months ago •

i've found that every modification to private property that improves something or solves or mitigates a problem is at its heart an encroachment, reservation or proviso on how private that property is allowed to be - which leads to my first reply

worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud

8 months ago •

congratulations on the single worst comment i've seen on my timeline today

Wally

8 months ago

Wally
8 months ago

In the Pinyin transliteration between Chinese and English, the character 'x' carries the sound 'sh'. For example, the Chinese leader's name is Xi Jinping, pronounced 'she jinping'.

I noticed that when thinking about what's happened to Xitter in the last 9 months.

Wally reshared this.

Alx 🐈

9 months ago •

Alx 🐈
9 months ago •

I know a lot of people will think that this is a 'radical leftist ideological approach', but when I read calls to 'design ways to survive the heat', I really feel sad for the current limited productivist vision #design has.

You know what will help us to survive? Downscaling production, stopping billionaires, ending colonialism (yes, it's still there) and shifting to a post-growth economy of care.
You know how designers can help? By stopping designing products we don't need.

#ClimateDiary

#Design #ClimateDiary

Wally reshared this.

Ruben Bolling 🪲

9 months ago •

Ruben Bolling 🪲
9 months ago •

🔵 This week's comic:

Florida's new African American History curriculum

-

Brought to you by the Inner Hive, including long-time member Robert “Frosted Donut” Gidley and new member Sandy Sycafoose.

Wally reshared this.

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲

9 months ago •

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲
9 months ago •

Hivemind/boost question, please?

What boardgame would you say is a fun, fast, widely accessible game of space combat?

I'm looking for something to potentially port to Classic Traveller that would make the space combat portion available to most players, instead of the wargame-like mechanics in the rules.

#ttrpg #boardgames #space #combat #pleaseboost

#BoardGames #TTRPG #Space #PleaseBoost #combat

3 comments - Show more

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲

9 months ago •

Hahaha! That sounds awesome! And the potential for shenanigans with rubber bands...

Manuel Correia

9 months ago •

Yeah, it goes outside the box of randomized dice/cards for combat resolution. One complaint I saw was that the "scoring" (checking the shots) can take longer than the gameplay (throwing the ships), so you might want to take it into account.

Wally reshared this.

Gerry McGovern

9 months ago •

Gerry McGovern
9 months ago •

"Degrowth or post-growth is not a form of austerity, it is not about getting poorer. It is a concept to rethink our values and what matters in life. At the core of degrowth concepts are values such as well-being, care, self-organization, and conviviality. It is a compelling invitation to prioritize our relationships with each other and with nature over extreme individualism and our addiction to stuff and purely consumerist forms of entertainment. "

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-degrowth-planet.html

Can degrowth save us and the planet?

In response to climate change and environmental breakdown, degrowth has become one of the key concepts in political ecology and related disciplines.

^{Dr Andreas Wittel (Phys.org)}

Spencer likes this.

Wally reshared this.

Mark Reid

9 months ago •

Mark Reid
9 months ago •

A friend attending #ICML just sent me a photo of this front runner for best poster award.

#icml

Spencer likes this.

2 people reshared this

Katylou

9 months ago •

I love this so much! From someone who has managed hundreds of conference posters

Wally reshared this.

Qasim Rashid, Esq.

9 months ago •

Qasim Rashid, Esq.
9 months ago •

Exactly 14 years ago today—on July 24, 2009—the minimum wage was set at $7.25 while top 1% were worth $5T. Today, billionaire wealth is $45T+, meanwhile the min wage is still $7.25.

This is what generational wage theft looks like. Pay workers. Tax billionaires. #RaiseTheWage

#raisethewage

3 people reshared this

Wally reshared this.

Matt Ferrel

9 months ago •

Matt Ferrel
9 months ago •

#billionaires

Wally reshared this.

Gerry McGovern

9 months ago •

Gerry McGovern
9 months ago •

At 1.4 trillion, more photos were taken in 2019 than in the entire 20th Century

In 2023, it’s estimated we’ll take 1.8 trillion photos

90% of all photos ever taken were taken since 2000

Since 2000, we’ve taken about 2,000 photos for every child, woman and man on planet

We’re storing about 10 trillion photos in the Cloud

Most of them will never be looked at again.

To deal with CO2 caused by photos between 2000 and 2020, you’d need to plant about 675 million trees

https://photutorial.com/photos-statistics/

How Many Photos Are There? (Statistics & Trends in 2023)

Discover everything you need to know about photo statistics - Number of photos taken daily, number of photos on Google, and much more!

^{Matic Broz (Photutorial)}

Wally reshared this.

PinkWug Comics

9 months ago •

PinkWug Comics
9 months ago •

Wally reshared this.

Johan Halse

9 months ago •

Johan Halse
9 months ago •

Everyone should read this by @adactio, it feels like the start of something pretty profound https://adactio.com/journal/20315

Permission

You have the power, not Google.

^adactio.com

@Jeremy Keith

Wally reshared this.

leif

10 months ago •

leif
10 months ago •

So the billionaires’ families are gonna get billed for all of this like the time my family got billed for my ambulance ride, right? Right?

Wally reshared this.

Fazia Rizvi

10 months ago •

Fazia Rizvi
10 months ago •

This seems like a worthy project. And I'm well on my way with the plants I already have, as well as increasing success with the wildflowers in my front yard. It's what I hope to accomplish with our backyard, with some set aside for growing fruits and veggies and my dyestuffs.

"Homegrown National Park® is a grassroots call-to-action to regenerate biodiversity and ecosystem function by planting native plants and creating new ecological networks."

https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org

Home - Homegrown National Park

WE CAN DO THIS! ONE PERSON AT A TIME* REGENERATEBIODIVERSITY PLANT NATIVE *No experience necessary! GET ON THE MAP 31,923 ALREADY ON Doug Tallamy co-founder HNP”In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty.

^{Homegrown National Park}

Spencer likes this.

Wally reshared this.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

1 year ago (Received 10 months ago) •

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸
1 year ago (Received 10 months ago) •

We shouldn't call them "Billionnaries" like they won a lottery and we're all envious. We should call them Capitalist Extremists like the world killing terrorists they are.

#capitalist #extremists #CapitalistExtremists #capitalism

#capitalism #capitalist #extremists #capitalistextremists

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Wally reshared this.

Sally Strange

10 months ago •

Sally Strange
10 months ago •

Even if you never read "The Dawn of Everything" by Davids Graeber and Wengrow, at least take this to heart:

What you learned about human prehistory was most likely a lie. There was no linear progression from hunter/gatherer to farmer to city dweller to modern human. Our ancient ancestors were just as creative as we are. They didn't wait until 5,000 years ago to figure out agriculture. They invented it and discarded it when it didn't suit them, over and over again. They built cities and abandoned them quickly or centuries later, over and over again. They invented and discarded socialism and despotism, many times over. And there's no correlation between mode of production vs. political freedom. The idea of a linear progression was invented by 18th century Europeans who were feeling defensive about the inequality in their societies as compared to those of indigenous Americans.

2 people like this

3 people reshared this

Wally reshared this.

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

Rod Hilton
11 months ago •

Just a friendly reminder that if you store your government ID on your phone and find yourself in a situation where you have to show them your ID, you'll have to hand them your unlocked phone to do it.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/1/23745168/google-wallet-state-id-drivers-license-custom-cards

Google Wallet is getting custom cards and state IDs this month

Google Wallet users will soon be able to add their state ID or driver’s licenses to Google Wallet and can create a digital version of any card that features a barcode or QR code.

^{Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)}

Gail Waldby reshared this.

5 comments - Show more

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

Yo this is getting boosted enough that I'm getting a lot of replies talking about the technical precautions that are taken to make this safe so let me be clear:

Folks like me were talking about how nervous it makes us that tech companies are keeping so much data on stuff like locations and even menstruation cycles. Folks like you called us paranoid.

Then states made abortion illegal & immediately police started subpoenaing that data to arrest women.

You're wrong. Consistently and dangerously.

This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Gail Waldby reshared this.

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

The precautions that tech companies put in place (because historically they're so very careful right?) are irrelevant when the people trying to bypass those precautions have the threat of state-sanctioned violence backing them up implicitly.

"Unlock your phone so I can make sure that isn't a lock screen wallpaper"

See how easy that was? They can say whatever the fuck they want.

You ever try to "show your ID" by leaving it in your wallet? They make you take it out. Why? Because fuck you.

Gail Waldby reshared this.

Anne Deschaine reshared this.

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

You know what you can't be doing if you hand your phone to a police officer, whether it remains locked on the ID or not?

You can't be recording the police officer on that phone.

So let me say it real loud for the people at the back who think that the convenience of not carrying a 10mm piece of plastic is worth putting folks who are disproportionately targeted by police in even greater risk:

DO NOT PUT YOUR FUCKING STATE ID ON YOUR FUCKING PHONE.

Gail Waldby reshared this.

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

Here's a case where a man got shot for reaching for his phone, the officer involved thought it was a gun.

"Hold on sir, don't unlock that. There have been reports of people triggering explosives with their phones. Hand it to me and give me your passcode."

This is easy as fuck. I could come up with 10 bullshit excuses to make you unlock your phone in as many minutes.

Don't give cops a reason to take your phone. Your recording is likely your only protection.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/22/us/sacramento-police-shooting/index.html

Rod Hilton

11 months ago •

Goddamn even if the cops leave the phone locked to view the ID, they'll just pocket the phone afterwards and "give it back to you when we're done here" - you willingly handed it over to them, they can keep it.

Now they know you can't be recording them. You want to hand over the one thing that they know might keep them honest?

Are people just not paying attention? How the fuck can anyone be in favor of this? You want your ID on your phone so bad, get a sticky ID holder and slap it on the back.

This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Wally reshared this.

Matt Bors

11 months ago •

Matt Bors
11 months ago •

This is a very fascinating comic by M. Sabine Rear, an artist who cannot see color. https://thenib.com/a-vision-in-monochrome/

A Vision in Monochrome | The Nib

Colorblindness in a color-coded world.

^{The Nib}

2 people reshared this

Wally reshared this.

John-Paul Keates

11 months ago •

John-Paul Keates
11 months ago •

The chef felt he was tilting at windmills, trying to incorporate unusual meats into traditional Indian cooking.
His only success was his Donkey Roti.

Wally reshared this.

Dr. Bradley J. Sommer

11 months ago •

Dr. Bradley J. Sommer
11 months ago •

When we talk about how billionaires shouldn’t exist I don’t think people really understand the massive difference in scale between a million and a billion. One million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. It’s an unfathomable amount of money that no one should have. Even uber-rich mega millionaires - hundreds of millions - really shouldn’t exist. We need to tax the rich; they’re the real free loaders. They’re the drains on the economy. They’re the ones dragging society down.

Wally reshared this.

:jan:‍:abreath:‍‍🌬:dandelion:

11 months ago •

:jan:‍:abreath:‍‍🌬:dandelion:
11 months ago •

Use the term "touch grass" to indicate that someone needs to seek out reality, use the term “touch moss" to indicate that they need to seek out ancient forest magic beyond their mortal Comprehension.

Wally reshared this.

This website uses cookies to recognize revisiting and logged-in users. You accept the usage of these cookies by continuing to use this website.

⇧