A loanword is a word taken from another language, such as ‘angst’ or ‘tsunami’ or ‘calque’.
A calque is a literal translation of a word from another language, such as rhinestone (from French caillou du Rhine) or blueblood (from Spanish sangre azul) or loanword (from German lehnwort).
“The idea that there could exist a state of communication that would allow games of truth to circulate freely, without any constraints or coercive effects, seems utopian to me. This is precisely a failure to see that power relations are not something that is bad in itself, that we have to break free of. I do not think that a society can exist without power relations, if by that one means the strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others. The problem, then, is not to try to dissolve them in the utopia of completely transparent communication but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, and also the morality, the ethos, the practice of the self, that will allow us to play these games of power with as little domination as possible […] Power is not evil. Power is games of strategy.”
Michel Foucault, Vol. 1 Ethics, ‘The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom’, 298
“The contrast between Kingsley Hall and a contemporary mental hospital did not lie simply in the fact that the ‘staff’ of the former thought that hierarchy was bad in the abstract, or that it would be nice in principal not to exercise control over the “patients.” Something more substantial was at stake, which can be caught up in the Heideggerian contrast between enframing and revealing. Conventional psychiatry, one could say, already knows what people should be like, and it is the telos of this sort of psychiatry to reengineer – to enframe – mental patients back into that image. That is why a hierarchical system of social relations is appropriate. Power relations and understandings of the self go together. The Bateson-Laing line, of course, was that selves are endlessly complex and endlessly explorable, and the antihierarchical approach of Kingsley Hall was deliberately intended to facilitate such exploration in both the mad and the sane. This is the mode of revealing, of finding out what the world has to offer us. We can, then, name this contrast in social relations in terms of power and hierarchy, but that is not enough. The sociological contrast echoed and elaborated a contrast in ontological stances – enframing versus revealing – which is, I think, very hard to grasp from the standpoint of modernity.”
Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future, ‘Ontology, Power, and Revealing’, 211
The first quote is an idea that has been turning over in my head since I first read it a few months ago (and it’s really worth reading), while the second is the conclusion of the current chapter in the book I’m reading currently, which I think reflects productively on the first. As well as reflecting, at least in part, the Foucauldian ethics of power relations it also places it in a somewhat practical setting, of (anti)psychiatry (the quote from Foucault continues by discussing sexual relations and pedagogy.)
I recently started taking a class on Buddhist ethics, out of a desire to transfer my reading into a more collective (and social) setting, and one of the specific teaching of the group I’m having a problem with is the idea that we can operate in two distinct states of the ‘power mode’ and ‘love mode’. Which, aside from the superficial tweeness, conflicts with my adoption of the idea above that power relations are an integral and inevitable part of human relationships: that ethics is the “conscious [réfléchie] practice of freedom” on the basis of acknowleding power, not substituting it with another category; ethics is above power, not in place of it. Though the latter approach does allow for limited uses of the ‘power mode’, in a sort of firm but fair way - the whole thing being a case-by-case application of deontological/Kantian-type intentionality and karmic consequentialism, but that’s another issue. I’m more interested in trying to reconcile Foucault’s idea of ever-present power relations in any “relationship in which one person tries to control the conduct of another” (and that basically being his definition of a relationship) with the quite enticing idea that trying to control others’ behaviour is manipulative and de facto unethical.
Culled from NTSB reports of plane crashes. The pilots are usually at fault. If only they had been better. Learn from their mistakes. Occasionally the victims survive.
The Armed Citizen (American Rifleman)
Culled from news media reports of good Americans using guns against bad people. This is why you own a gun. Be inspired by their triumphs. Occasionally the perpetrators die.
Dude, your hairline’s gone full Mr. Spacely and you’re still rocking filthy white boy dreadlocks? Like, two and two halves of them?
Dude.
Combatants routinely styled themselves after heroes in violent American action movies like Rambo, Terminator, and Jungle Killer, and many went under such fanciful noms de guerre as Colonel Action, Captain Mission Impossible, General Murder, Young Colonel Killer, General Jungle King, Colonel Evil Killer, General War Boss III, General Jesus, Major Trouble, General Butt Naked, and, of course, General Rambo.
I think at some point my mind assigned Thomas Pynchon, Theodore Sturgeon, and Kurt Vonnegut as the same person.
im drinking earl grey
which
it’s the default tea for a lot of people, but i don’t usually drink earl grey
for me, the default tea is ceylon
earl grey has a really strong smell but it’s not really a tea smell
Everyone starts with Earl Grey because Picard’s tea is the only tea they know.
(Mine is Market Spice)
“Donald Trump: Because Charlie Sheen Isn’t Running”
Honestly I think the dude’s got a chance, not even just in the primary but the general. He’s an attention whore but an experienced one, knows how to wield it. (And I wouldn’t be much of a d'Annunzian to dismiss the potential of that.)
And honestly, a realignment around welfarist (white) nationalism has a lot of potential for the GOP - that was the FDR/New Deal brand that worked so well so long for the Democrats, and it could really scramble the electoral map, put PA, the upper Midwest, even OR in play at the risk of what? (correction from SC:) NC and AZ, accepting that VA’s gone, higher margins places they were never going to get? Then lock that in until and unless TX flips.
The barrier’s always been pols not wanting to risk their reputations or fundraising access among the donor class, but a billionaire narcissist’s a silver bullet for that.
One fascinating thing is how damn ‘80s he is. I mean obviously as a person and public figure, but his campaign issues too. Talking about Chinese currency manipulation he’s clearly going by parallel to the Reaganite trade wars with Japan, that thing about Mexico sending us their rapists - he knew phrasing it like that would be catnip to the smelling salts crowd, that’s the point, but the underlying point he was making was that open borders allow South America to dump their problem populations on us JUST LIKE the Open Door policy enabled the Mariel Boatlift…
This is actually some of the best storytelling advice I’ve ever come across.
Another thing about this novel from 1909 is that the author is constantly making these little comments about Men and Women and their ostensibly universal tendencies, and sometimes I have no idea where he’s getting them from:
The inner sheet, according to the untidy ways of women with newspapers, lay discarded on the floor.
[…]
… he mechanically gathered up the two parts of the newspaper, with a man’s instinct for tidiness in printed matter …
tumblr cartoon blogger in 1973: Friendly reminder that Fred from Scooby Doo is exploitative and has a blatant disregard for others’ mental health as evidenced by his tendency to have the gang split up leaving Shaggy and Scooby by themselves even though they’re clearly terrified
ACTUAL ANGEL
dancingtotaylorsbeat: ACTUAL ANGEL That’s how the populists of the Late Roman Republic came to power, leading up to Caesar himself. Winning over the people with conspicuous displays of charity and great arena entertainments. Bread and circuses. When I say she’s going to become the Queen of America, I FUCKING MEAN IT.
TWO BILLION YEARS
Mount Roraima, This tabletop mountain is one of the oldest mountains on Earth, dating back two billion years when the land was lifted high above the ground by tectonic activity. The sides of the mountain are sheer vertical cliffs, with several waterfalls, making it nearly impossible to climb.
