We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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· Environment · How very odd!

Greenpeace loses £3m in currency speculation

I liked the first comment, from a merry soul called ‘casaleiro’:

“Shoulda put the money in armaments and petroleum.”

June 16th, 2014 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)

Fountain of the Future

· Arts & Entertainment · Central & Eastern Europe · How very odd! · Slogans & Quotations

A story in The Telegraph has brought to mind the following quotation, which seems doubly apt:

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

– Karl Marx, writing in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”

June 14th, 2014 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)

In which this humble writer is pulled under the bridge and eaten

· How very odd! · Humour · Personal views · Philosophical

I thought this bijoux little commentette of mine to my post demanding reparations be paid to women, a reply to an irritating factual objection from running dog of the neoliberal neopatriarchy Tim Worstall, was rather good in the insane troll logic line:

Tim Worstall,

“As it happens the majority of wealth is held by women (longer life spans and inheritance etc to blame for that), so, on average women are richer than men.”

You just don’t understand.
Clearly it is a benefit to receive money (such as reparations) without having to work for it.
Therefore possession of whatever quality makes one eligible for reparations is a form of unearned privilege.
Relative group poverty is by definition the result of past injustice, and makes your group eligible for reparations.
Therefore you males, by your relative poverty, are the possessors of unearned privilege.
Therefore it is only justice that you privileged ones make reparations to those like me who are underprivileged.
(Standing orders and direct debits payable to the Natalie Solent Justice for Womyn Settlement Account.)

However Beatrix Campbell has me beat:

Crime is only “free trade” by another means, and since it involves force, it is not free.

May 25th, 2014 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)

Astonishing news!

· How very odd! · Media & Journalism · UK affairs

In London today, the BBC has revealed a remarkable revelation:

Windows work in both directions! Not only can a person in a hotel room see out of a window, it is possible for people to also see in from the outside!

Truly we live in an age of marvels! Ah that such a cognitive breakthrough could have happened here, it make me proud to be English! Article like this are why I often send the BBC twice the licence fee they actually demand from me (under threat of jail if I do not pay up) because how can anyone doubt they provide such inestimable value. No, seriously, for the life of me, I cannot estimate how much value they provide. I truly cannot.

May 11th, 2014 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)

‘Reason’ nails it

· How very odd! · Media & Journalism

There is a very funny article by Reason, titled The stupidest pseudo-story of the week, about a Daily Mail article about halal food. Reason likens the hysteria to criticising kosher food with a headline:

RABBIS ARE PUTTING SOME WEIRD JEW-SPELL ON YOUR MEALS!

I LOL’ed. But then again, it is often said I am famously easy to amuse 😛

May 8th, 2014 | 111 comments - (Comments are closed)

Guardian reports that state planning makes things worse…

· How very odd! · UK affairs

State planning makes things worse? Is this the Guardian I am reading? That bastion of people who worship state action? I can only assume the Rapture is at hand!

Well, no, not really.

April 26th, 2014 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)

Guardian quote of the day

· How very odd! · Media & Journalism · Slogans & Quotations

And black people, as always, are left to clean up the shit that drops from the imperial anus of white corporate America into the ghettoized toilets of terror

– Nyle Fort

April 24th, 2014 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)

Bad News! The Earth is doomed! Eco-disaster will be here by 1999! So…

· Environment · How very odd!

oh… hang on… what year is it now?

Over on Climate Depot, they have a wonderful run down on how the climate’s doomsday clock keeps getting reset.

But of course THIS TIME ITS FOR REAL.

Honest.

Sadly this 2007 prediction has proved to be a few years out, because whilst the hysteria is indeed visibly on the wane, a great many people do not seem to have got the memo telling them it has been noticed that their Emperor has no clothes.

April 16th, 2014 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)

Am I the last one to get the joke?

· How very odd! · Media & Journalism

Whaddya think? Are either of these two articles from the Guardian Comment Network (i.e. lefty blogs to which the Guardian gives a larger audience) for real, or are they magnificent satire?

From SE Smith, a writer who “lives and works in northern California, covering social justice issues”: ‘The people are so beautiful!’ That’s enough of the colonial tourism

While you’re drooling over Indian women in saris at the produce market, are you paying attention to the women organising against mining companies and western intrusions in India? Are you paying attention to the women opposing tourism and fighting objectifying activities in their communities?

From Tom Whyman, a well-named PhD Philosophy student: Beware of cupcake fascism

…this has an effect on our culture that we can understand as being a sort of gentrification. The cupcake has always itself been a gentrifying force: after all, the “pop-​up cupcake shop” is the paradigmatic pop-​up shop. But what all these things do is assert the infantilised values of an increasingly infantilised middle-​class world on general society. This is how the passive-​aggressive violence of the infantilised twee fascist manifests itself: moving across the world with a cupcake as a cowcatcher, shunting out everything that does not correspond to the values manifested within it; a much more effective way of sweeping up the sort of (poor, working-​class, black) forces that informed the 2011 London riots than any broom.

April 15th, 2014 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)

You gotta hand it to him…

· Health & medical · How very odd! · Science & Technology · Self ownership

…Mark Goddard of Newton Abbot in Devon is not a man afraid to take his medical destiny into his own hands hand.

Man builds home-made guillotine and chops off hand after doctors refuse to amputate

Mark Goddard has been in constant pain since he was involved in a motorbike crash 16 years ago.

But after an unsuccessful two-year campaign to have his nerve shattered hand surgically removed, he decided to do it himself.

He rigged up a home-made guillotine using an axe with a weight strapped to it, to ensure it would have enough power to amputate his hand.

The first blow sliced though the bone but didn’t sever all the tendons, leaving his hand hanging off a bloodied stump.

He then used a surgeon’s scalpel to cut through the remaining tissues before dropping the remains into a bin, which he later filled with charcoal and set alight – in order to prevent his hand being re-attached.

That was the Express. The Mirror adds some more details:

Dad refused NHS operation builds GUILLOTINE to amputate his own hand – but it still hurts

Mark spent two weeks designing the guillotine and ensured his wife and son were out before he severed his hand.

He tied two tourniquets above his forearm to reduce blood flow and had a first aid kit nearby.

Mark wants a device called a spinal stimulator implanted into his back to ease the nerve pain.

He said he was “reasonably hopeful” his wish would be granted after receiving a more sympathetic hearing from doctors and psychiatrists in the wake of his dramatic protest two weeks ago.

A Devon and Cornwall police spokesman said: “Police received a call from the ambulance service to say a man had cut his hand off.

“We were concerned he might have a knife and be a risk to himself or others.

“Units attended and upon arrival a 44-year-old man had indeed cut his hand off. He was otherwise rational.

While it is not the place of the police to criticise the behaviour of citizens who have remained within the law, it would be a harsh judge who held it against the police spokesman quoted that the placement of his penultimate word did imbue his observations with a slightly ironical tone.

I totally support Mr Goddard’s right to do as he pleases with his own body, sympathise with the suffering that led him to take such a desperate measure, applaud the practical and rational way he went about it, and very much hope that the NHS will be persuaded to take his pain seriously in future, but I am not sure I would recommend his method. Hands up who thinks it was a good idea? (Er, not you, Mark.)

March 30th, 2014 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)

The little wooden ball looks so happy

· Arts & Entertainment · How very odd!

Why I wuvs capitalism, part Umpteen Hundred and Two.

No. 6: Bach on a Japanese forest xylophone. It’s actually a mobile phone advert.

March 21st, 2014 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)

OMG it appears I am a feminist!

· How very odd! · Sui generis

There is an article on the Grauniad site called ‘Men – if you’re not a feminist, it’s fine, just move on’ which was rather amusing.

My position is no one, male or female, should have any statutory right to maternity or paternity leave, and indeed an employee should not expect it unless they negotiated for that with their employer.

So it seems that as I favour equality in maternity and paternity leave, I am a feminist according to some commenters! Who knew? 😉

January 9th, 2014 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
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