107 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. These efforts were magnified as a result of promotional skillsdemonstrated by such organizations as the Colonial Dames, who worked toelevate the Mayflower Pilgrims and Winthrop’s Puritans into some of theforemost figures in our national memory.

      What parallelisms were there between the Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution, or Lost Cause societies that fundraised for Civil War statues in the post-Civil War and 19-teens to promote white power in the American south?

      Did the structures and existence inform later efforts?

    2. The hallowed American dream is thegold standard by which politicians and voters alike are meant to measurequality of life as each generation pursues its own definition of happinessunfettered by the restraints of birth (who your parents are) or station (theposition you start out from in the class system).

      Did it help that America was broadly formed during the start of the Industrial Revolution and at a time in which social mobility was dramatically different than the period of history which proceeded it?

      And how much of this difference is split with the idea of the rise of (toxic) capitalism and the switch to "keeping up with the Jonses" which also tends to drive class distinctions?

  2. Mar 2024
  3. Feb 2024
    1. We strolled through the square at Spiegelgasse this Tuesday, visiting a pop-up gallery of the graduation projects of several students at https://www.zhdk.ch/ the ZH art academy. Turns out this place has history! It is where Dada started (and Lenin lived next door at the time!).

  4. Jan 2024
    1. This dilemma was reflected in the furor over a second round of Chinese simplification in 1977, an effort that was rescinded in 1986.

      พอดิบพอดีกับช่วงสิ้นสุดของการปฏิวัติวัฒนธรรมและเข้าสู่ยุคสมัย 改革开放 ของ 邓小平

    1. "In transport, we have progressed from coaches and horses by way of trains to electric traction, motor-cars, and aeroplanes. In mental organization, we have simply multiplied our coaches and horses and livery stables."

      from World Brain, double check with source

  5. Dec 2023
    1. I think that what we have to 01:23:24 do is have the revolution that Benjamin Franklin said we need if because if we don't solve the problem in the United States I don't see us solving the global 01:23:39 problem
      • for: quote - James Hansen, quote Benjamin Franklin, climate crisis - leverage point - political revolution

      • quote

        • If we don't solve the problem in the United States, I don't see us solving the global problem
      • author: James Hansen
      • date: Dec 2023

      • comment

        • Tipping Point network
    1. the term that I'm knocking around at the moment for you know something which isn't a green New Deal de growth is a 00:32:28 green Democratic Revolution
      • for: definition - green democratic revolution

      • definition: green democratic revolution

        • Schneider proposes this strategy is more pragmatic than either green growth or degrowth. The words are chosen carefully:
          • green - obvious
          • democratic - authentic equal power of the people
          • revolution - because we are at the precipice, a fast evolution, a rEVOLUTION is necessary
        • He finds both of these current approaches problematic:
          • green growth employs the same elite debt-based growth logic that contributed to the fossil growth economy
          • degrowth is a terrible term for climate communications which brings the wrong immediate connotations to the masses so creates unnecessary friction at the outset for any strategy that needs to win over the masses.
      • for: climate crisis - voting for global political green candidates, podcast - Planet Critical, interview - Planet Critical - James Schneider - communications officer - Progressive International, green democratic revolution, climate crisis - elite control off mainstream media

      • podcast: Planet Critical

      • host: Rachel Donald
      • title: Overthrowing the Ruling Class: The Green Democratic Revolution

      • summary

        • This is a very insightful interview with James Schneider, communications officer of Progressive International on the scales of political change required to advert our existential Poly / meta / meaning crisis.
        • James sees 3 levels of crisis
          • ordinary crisis emerging from a broken system
          • larger wicked problems that cannot be solved in isolation
          • the biggest umbrella crisis that covers all others - the last remaining decades of the fossil fuel system,
            • due to peak oil but accelerated by
            • climate crisis
        • There has to be a paradigm shift on governance, as the ruling elites are driving humanity off the cliff edge
        • This is not incremental change but a paradigm shift in governance
        • To do that, we have to adopt an anti-regime perspective, that is not reinforcing the current infective administrative state, otherwise, as COVID taught us, we will end up driving the masses to adopt hard right politicians
        • In order to establish the policies that are aligned to the science, the people and politicians have to be aligned.
        • Voting in candidates who champion policies aligned to science is a leverage point.
        • That can only be done if the citizenry is educated enough to vote for such politicians
        • So there are two parallel tasks to be done:
          • mass education program to educate citizens
          • mass program to encourage candidates aligned to climate science to run for political office
    2. the French Revolution happened in Denmark
      • for: social tipping points - political, quote - french Revolution - Denmark

      • quote.

        • the French Revolution happened in Denmark
    3. how do we organize a green de Democratic Revolutio
      • for: question - how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?

      • question

        • how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?
    4. it is so difficult to get people excited about politics because they've sort of seen through the two- party system now where it's just like the same thing over and 00:38:25 over
      • for: green democratic revolution - critique

      • critique: green democratic revolution

      • paraphrase

        • it is so difficult to get people excited about politics because
        • they've sort of seen through the two- party system now where it's just like the same thing over and over again
        • so you have to offer something new
        • but I think was quite difficult for the left to really bring about a progressive Revolution
        • Iif you take that kind of thinking to its logical conclusion, one essentially ends up just abolishing the whole system and end up at Anarchy
        • meanwhile, the right is doubling down and making itself a firmer force

      • comment

        • in a sense, it feels like a moment when the traditional tension between liberals and conservatives is reaching a peak
        • over force is desperately hanging onto the past whilst smoother is forestry moving in a new direction
  6. Nov 2023
      • for: three great separations, alienation, financial capital vs social capital, the great simplification, linked in post - social capital
    1. Why do we feel so dissatisfied with the Western way? I think it’s because we have valued financial capital over social capital.
      • for: The Great Simplifcation, Nate Hagen, The Great Complexification, The Great Alienation, three great separations

      • comment

        • Last night, I had a thought about Nate Hagen's "The Great Simplification" project. Seeing Annilina's post this morning made me think of a recent film I annotated on the isolated Jarawa people living on a once desolate island off the coast of India
        • Watching the events of modern Indians exploited the Jarawa is like watching colonialism unfold in realtime.
        • The Jarawa people interviewed said how they are happy with the life they have lived before modernity discovered them.
        • Progress, especially the Western flavored one beginning with Colonialism, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution has set a trajectory for what we might call "The Great Complexification".
          • Remember when watches and clocks were all mechanical spring and windup? Now billions of them depend on batteries. Do we really need to modernize everything? It simply creates more waste and greater demands on nature for natural resources. Do we really need exponentially increase stuff with an Internet of Things?
        • Western influenced progress has led us into multiple progress traps, which now make up the many threads of the current polycrisis.
        • Along with the Great Complexification, we also have the Great Alienation. John Ikard writes of the "Three Great Separations":
        • These created successively more alienation. As progress marched towards modernity, we created more and more technology that broke apart community and making us dependent on transportation and communication technology to maintain it or some proxy of it. Today, we live in cities teeming with millions, yet there is widespread alienation in the mere act of walking or driving down a crowded street.
        • It is the irony of modernity that it packs so many people into small spaces, and yet we are all estranged to each other.
    1. The rejection of the provincial assemblies’ petition movement for a national parliament had already led many constitutionalists to accept the necessity of revolution, i

      they tried to get reform through legal processes but then had to resort to revolution when this didn't work

    2. unity of the five races advocated by the constitutionalists helped keep the border regions of the Qing Empire together.

      simultaneous ethnic/racial unity and disunity

    3. socially regressive, but recognizes the politically progressive contributions of the constitutionalist gentry in leading the transition to a republican form of government.

      proggress? or disruption

    4. revolutionaries may have both appealed to and created anti-Manchu sentiment through their propaganda.
    5. The revolution happened suddenly, unlike other revolutions that were long and protracted.
    1. We're in the time of the French Revolution now, a time where revolutionaries break with superstitions from the past. They will only be guided by reason. You have this extremely decorated French historian and geographer that's on a mission. A mission to fight the church. 00:07:15 He published this book on the cosmographical opinions of the Church Fathers, and he really goes for it. He writes how until recently, all science has had to be based on the Bible, and geographers were forced to believe Earth was a flat surface. According to him, this was all because of three irresistible arguments persecution, prison and the stake. I
      • for Jean-Antoine Letronne, myth - flat earth, book - The Cosographical opinions of the Church Fathers
  7. Oct 2023
    1. je länger ich drüber nachdenke, desto mehr hasse ich alle leute, die irgendwie mit drogen zu tun haben.

      ich meine, klar, legalize all drugs, legalize all guns, fuck the police, ja ja, bla bla. ich war selber auch schon 3 jahre im knast wegen cannabis-anbau in bayern, also erzähl mir was neues.

      das problem ist, drogen ticken ist controlled opposition. euer scheinbarer "gangster" lifestyle ist zeitverschwendung.

      die leute, die eine blutige revolution führen sollten gegen dieses scheiss system, die sind beschäftigt mit scheisse verkaufen, weil die brauchen das geld... shekel shekel rules the world...

      und dann? schwuler normalo lifestyle, also frau ficken, kinder kriegen, sesshaft werden, sich erpressbar machen vom jugendamt, am schluss auch noch steuern zahlen, weil "liebe deine feinde".

      zeitverschwendung. potenzialverschwendung.

      ihr wollt das system ficken, aber bleibt hängen auf diesem kindischen pseudo-rebellen trip?

      wird zeit dass die taliban übernimmt... mal sehn wie weit die kommen, bevor auch die wieder den schwanz vom system lutschen

    1. lustig. schon bald (diesen winter? nächsten winter?) wird die mehrheit verhungern und erfrieren,<br /> und die sogenannte "opposition" beschäftigt sich mit kleinscheiss.

      wir brauchen viel mehr extremismus und viel mehr radikale lösungen (selbstversorgung...),<br /> und nicht diese schwule weichgespülte "wir sind was besseres" gelaber.

      die AFD hat jeden tag angst vor parteiverbot,<br /> also werden so "radikale typen" wie ich von anfang an rausselektiert.

      dabei sollten so "radikale typen" wie ich eine blutige revolution (einen militärputsch) führen,<br /> und die ganzen versager und verräter vom alten system an die wand stellen.

      aber auf revolution habt ihr gar keine lust, ihr wollt auch nur reformen, und noch mehr gesetze,<br /> aber es gibt keine politische lösung, weil das system ist radikal falsch, also nicht reformierbar.

      deswegen, für mich sind graue wölfe 1000 mal interessanter als die AFD.<br /> ich bin sowieso kein christ oder jude, aber auch kein moslem.<br /> einfach nur pragmatisch, ein echter "wissenschaftler", einer der wissen schafft.

      "Their evil designs run against nature." -- Kevin Alfred Strom

      (ich freu mich schon auf den prozess wegen "gefühlsverletzung", ich lach mich tot...)

    1. arguments in favor of these ''objective'' tests: They are easy to grade; uniformity and unmistakable answers imply fairness; one can compare performance over time and gauge the results of programs; the validity of questions is statistically tested and the performance of students is followed up through later years.

      Some of the benefits of multiple-choice tests.

      Barzun misses the fact that these are not just easy for teachers to grade, but they're easier for mass grading by machines in a century dominated by standardization of knowledge in a world dominated by standardized mechanization for a mass-production oriented society.

      Cross reference educational reforms of Eliot following the rise of Taylorism.

  8. Sep 2023
    1. So whatever problem you have in your knowledge, and suddenly you think, oh, that doesn't fit, there is a problem, and so on, what do you do? You stop projecting your attention onto the set of theoretical object you have, and you come back where you are. Where are you? In the laboratory observing dots on the screen. 00:24:54 And then you think, is my picture adequate to the dots I'm seeing now in the screen? That's what occurs at each scientific revolution. Suddenly, if things, scientists say, poof, finished, all this theory, I have to think everything again from what is given to me.
      • for: scientific revolution, incremental science, science - epoche

      • quote

        • So whatever problem you have in your knowledge, and suddenly you think, oh, that doesn't fit, there is a problem, and so on, what do you do?
        • You stop projecting your attention onto the set of theoretical object you have, and you come back where you are.
        • Where are you? In the laboratory observing dots on the screen.
        • And then you think, is my picture adequate to the dots I'm seeing now in the screen?
        • That's what occurs at each scientific revolution.
        • Suddenly, if things, scientists say, poof, finished, all this theory,
        • I have to think everything again from what is given to me.
      • author: Michel Bitbol
    1. This done, Adler can say that young crit ics of “the System” are not true revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries work within the System — since the System is the Revolution.

      How does the general idea of zeitgeist of the early 70's relate to the idea of "revolution"?

      See also: Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1970)

    2. Adler's record of ineptness is pret ty good so far — but he surpasses it with his third Revolution. He dis likes both Marxists and Moscow, so how did the Russian Revolution be come one of the great sources or change in modern society? Because “with the Russian Revolution, we have, for the first time, the emer gence of the welfare state” — mild offspring sired from such ferocious parents. In the past, only right‐wing kooks thought F.D.R. derived his in spiration for W.P.A. from the Bol shies!

      Reference to the "welfare state" in 1971 by Gary Wills.

  9. Aug 2023
    1. Democracy and Education was written before the assemblyline had achieved its dominant position in the industrialworld and before mechanization had depopulated the farmsof America.

      Interesting history and possible solutions.

      Dewey on the humanization of work front running the dramatic changes of and in work in an industrial age?


      Note here the potential coupling of democracy and education as dovetailing ideas rather than separate ideas which can be used simultaneously. We should take care here not to end up with potential baggage that could result in society and culture the way scholasticism combined education and religion in the middle ages onward.

  10. May 2023
    1. framework for making claims with evidence. The simplest of which, which is what I use, is Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER). Students are taught to state their claim (The theme of the story is X), support it with evidence (Readers can infer this through the story's plot, particularly...), and explain their reasoning (Because the character's action result in X, ...) Another great framework is The Writing Revolution/The Hochman Method's "single paragraph outline". Students need to be taught that these are the units of thought -- the most basic forms of an argument. And, even before this, they need to know that a sentence is the form of an idea.
  11. Mar 2023
    1. Sustainable consumption scholars offer several explanations forwhy earth-friendly, justice-supporting consumers falter when itcomes to translating their values into meaningful impact.
      • Paraphrase
      • Claim
        • earth-friendly, justice-supporting consumers cannot translate their values into meaningful impact.
      • Evidence
      • “the shading and distancing of commerce” Princen (1997) is an effect of information assymetry.
        • producers up and down a supply chain can hide the negative social and environmental impacts of their operations, putting conscientious consumers at a disadvantage. //
      • this is a result of the evolution of alienation accelerated by the industrial revolution that created the dualistic abstractions of producers and consumers.
      • Before that, producers and consumers lived often one and the same in small village settings
      • After the Industrial Revolution, producers became manufacturers with imposing factories that were cutoff from the general population
      • This set the conditions for opaqueness that have plagued us ever since. //

      • time constraints, competing values, and everyday routines together thwart the rational intentions of well-meaning consumers (Røpke 1999)

      • assigning primary responsibility for system change to individual consumers is anathema to transformative change (Maniates 2001, 2019)
      • This can be broken down into three broad categories of reasons:

        • Rebound effects
          • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=jevon%27s+paradox
          • increases in consumption consistently thwart effciency-driven resource savings across a wide variety of sectors (Stern 2020). -sustainability scholars increasingly critique “effciency” both as:
            • a concept (Shove 2018)
            • as a form of“weak sustainable consumption governance” (Fuchs and Lorek 2005).
          • Many argue that, to be successful, effciency measures must be accompanied by initiatives that limit overall levels of consumption, that is, “strong sustainable consumption governance.
        • Attitude-behavior gap

        • Behavior-impact gap

  12. Jan 2023
    1. One might call pirate legends, then, the most importantform of poetic expression produced by that emerging North Atlanticproletariat whose exploitation laid the ground for the industrialrevolution.
    2. Modern factory discipline was born on ships and on plantations. Itwas only later that budding industrialists adopted those techniques ofturning humans into machines into cities like Manchester andBirmingham.
    1. it's  always a matter in the end of redefining   a power relation between different social groups  so it cannot be completely peaceful it involves a   conflicting social interest it involves different  groups of people with different agenda and you   know in many ways we have we are in a situation  which is not i think completely different from   00:12:20 the one at the time of the french revolution which  is at the you know those who those who should pay   have somehow managed to design a legal system  and a political system so that they can escape   taxation and and at the same time middle class and  lower class people are you know fed up of paying   the bill for them and so and so the solution is  more and more debt but you know at some point   there will have to be something else will have to  happen and i think it will be roughly the same it   00:12:51 will have to be roughly the same solution as it  was you know 200 years ago which is the end of   fiscal privileges of a small group in the  population that has that has managed to   escape taxation for for for too long

      !- Thomas Piketty : comment - Just like in the time of the French Revolution, the small class of elites have designed a legal and political system to escape taxation. - We will likely have another French Revolution-like event to end fiscal privileges

    2. as long as the system of  of political finance and you know parties and   campaigns and media and think tank you know  are largely controlled by by large wealth   00:29:11 holders you know our collective ability to  change the distribution of wealth and the   you know through through taxation or that  consolation and or what you know whatever   the method is going to be limited so it will take  major political fights and in some cases you know   changing the political rules of the game and the  political institution to to to changes and and   you know the good news is that this has  always been like this or this has always   00:29:39 and and still sometimes you know it has worked  in the in the past but it has worked you know   i mentioned the french revolution you know of  course that's a huge popular mobilization uh also   in the 20th century i mentioned after world war  ii after world war one well let's be clear it's   only because there was a very powerful uh you know  labor movement a socialist movement and communist   counter model in the east which in the end put  pressure uh on the on the uh and you know and on   00:30:09 the in effect and the elite governing elite in in  in the west so that they they they had to accept   a number of decisions you know which which were  limited in their scope but still which transform   the economic and social system in in a very  substantial way as compared to the pre-world   war one and 19th century economic system but it's  only through this enormous political mobilization   00:30:34 and collective organization and you know it will  be the same in in the past

      !- Thomas Piketty : limited ability for real change as long as elites can lobby governments - but in the past, there has been success, as the two cases previously mentioned - so it is possible, but will take just as enormous a political mobilization of the people

    3. there   00:08:24 are two modern episodes which i find particularly  striking in terms of getting that back to zero   or at least you know concerning a big part of  that the french revolution of course is a very   important example so you know this was a time  when the basically the political system did not   manage to make pay those who should have paid  for the public spending which was the nobility   00:08:47 so there was a fight flight toward that because  people who should have paid the tax managed on   how to escape and the solution was the french  revolutions and the fiscal privileges of the   aristocracy the conservation of that through  partisan inflation partly through taxation   and that's sort of one modern episode the other  modern episode which i want to to refer to is of   00:09:12 course uh after world war ii uh you know after  you know in 1945 1950 most rich economies had   public debt which were enormous you know even even  bigger than than today and they made the choices   you know the political choice through you know  very conflictual social movement political fights   00:09:37 in the end the choice was made collectively not  to replace his debt so this happens in various   ways you know inflation in some cases but  but some countries like germany in particular   which is viewed today as as very conservative in  terms of economic doctrine and ideology and which   in many ways is very conservative we'll  see after the election in a few days but   you know it's still going to be quite conservative  probably in any case but in fact after world war   00:10:05 ii developed applied the solution to to  get rid of the debt of the past through   a monetary reform and through progressive taxation  of very high wealth holders in order to in effect   compensate the lower wealth holders for the uh for  the monetary reform and the the loss of links that   was implied by military reform so that in the  end i mean this is not job this was certainly   00:10:33 not a perfect system but as compared to all other  ways of getting rid of past that you know this was   certainly one of the one of the most equitable  or at least or the least unequitable way to   to address the problem and you know i think we  will have we will have other episodes like this

      !- Thomas Piketty : two ways we got rid of debt in the recent past - french revolution - execute the nobility who escaped paying their fair share of debt - post WWII restructuring

    1. A. Both Robespierre and Animal are ambitious and protean members of an elite group, shifting their identities in response to changing conditions and gradually taking on increasingly extreme positions, driving both the French Revolution and the Muppet Show into what is colloquially known as “The Terror”.
  13. Aug 2022
    1. It should be a truism that material conditions matter much less than expectations. That was true during the Great Depression and it’s true today. The rhetoric of the rant on the web feeds off extreme expectations — any imperfection in the economy will be treated as a crisis and a true crisis will be seen as the Apocalypse. Take the example of Chile. For 40 years, it had high economic growth, rising into the ranks of the wealthiest nations. During this time, Chile enjoyed a healthy democracy, in which political parties of left and right alternated in office. Everyone benefited. Yet in 2019, with many deaths and much material destruction, the Chilean public took to the streets in revolt against the established order. Its material expectations had been deeply frustrated, despite the country’s economic and political successes.

      Martin Gurri talks about how material conditions matter less than expectations. For 40 years Chile had enjoyed a healthy democracy, yet in 2019 the people revolted. They had become deeply frustrated with their material expectations despite the country's successes.

  14. Jul 2022
    1. That led to the third transition: Europeans no longer needed on the farm became mill workers and coal miners. Scientific progress encouraged coal-fuelled industries and the telegraph spread information worldwide.

      Third Transition: Industrial Revolution

  15. Jun 2022
    1. Concerning deforestation, Pomeranz stresses the fact that by theend of the eighteenth century, Europe had spent nearly all its avail-able resources. In the United Kingdom as in France, in Denmark asin Prussia, in Italy as in Spain, forests had disappeared at a rapid ratein the course of the preceding centuries, decreasing from around 30to 40 percent of the surface area around the year 1500 to scarcely morethan 10 percent in 1800 (16 percent in France, 4 percent in Denmark).Initially, trading in wood with regions of eastern and northern Eu-rope that were still forested made it possible to compensate in partfor these losses, but very soon that was no longer sufficient. We alsosee a gradual deforestation in China between 1500 and 1800, but it isless marked, in part because of a greater political and commercial in-tegration between the most advanced regions and the wooded re-gions of the interior.

      Kenneth Pomeranz indicates that there was massive deforestation of most of Europe 1500 (30-40 percent coverage) to 1800 (scarcely over 10 percent coverage) during the early industrial age. Similarly there was a corresponding deforestation in China, but it was less marked because of the their size and distribution of technology.

    2. How did Europe and the United States attain such a dominant posi-tion on the global level, at least until recently? Although no single ex-planation exists, we shall see that slavery and colonialism played acentral role in the Western world’s acquisition of wealth.

      Slavery and colonialism likely played the most outsized roles in global positioning for the United States and Europe, but how might we also comparatively measure these effects separately and also include other broad effects like the industrial revolution?

  16. May 2022
    1. in my experience it has its head has a similar pattern to what henry ford did to the automobile 01:20:31 industry so before him it was basically like a few people built one car at a time and he basically broke up the process so you had like i don't know how many but 01:20:43 like dozens people a dozen people and each individual had just one one motion to do and the industrialization specialization right yeah and the the result was that 01:20:56 each individual didn't know anything and all the knowledge was in the process and my suspicion is that the promise of the settle custom that the paper 01:21:08 just write themselves it's like a very prominent process a promise around the telecast method lead to the to the thinking that you basically reduce your 01:21:20 the need for yourself and all the intelligence all the proficiency is put into a system and you have something doing for you and you treat yourself more like a like a 01:21:33 worker on a an assembly line just being and having all just a simple a simple motion that you have to do and then the end product will be 01:21:45 but will be very complex and very sophisticated because the intelligence is embedded in the process

      Sascha Fast analogizes the writing process using a zettelkasten to Henry Ford's assembly line for building cars. Each worker on the assembly line has a limited bit of knowledge for their individual part of the process, but most of the knowledge and value is built into the overarching process itself. This makes the overall system quicker and more efficient.

      Similarly with note taking, each individual portion of the process is simple and self-contained, but it allows the writer to create a much more creative and complex piece in the end. Here an individual can accomplish all of the individual steps in a self-contained way while focusing on individual steps without becoming lost in the subsequent steps which would otherwise require a tremendous additional amount of energy.

    1. The worker cooperatives organized in the era of artisan labor paralleled, in many ways, the forms of work organization that are arising today.  Networked organization, crowdsourced credit and the implosion of capital outlays required for physical production, taken together, are recreating the same conditions that made artisan cooperatives feasible in the days before the factory system.  In the artisan manufactories that prevailed into the early 19th century, most of the physical capital required for production was owned by the work force; artisan laborers could walk out and essentially take the firm with them in all but name.  Likewise, today, the collapse of capital outlay requirements for production in the cultural and information fields (software, desktop publishing, music, etc.) has created a situation in which human capital is the source of most book value for many firms;  consequently, workers are able to walk out with their human capital and form “breakaway firms,” leaving their former employers as little more than hollow shells.  And the rise of cheap garage manufacturing machinery (a Fab Lab with homebrew CNC tools costing maybe two months’ wages for a semi-skilled worker) is, in its essence, a return to the days when low physical capital costs made worker cooperatives a viable alternative to wage labor.

      This is the same old delusions cf commons based peer production. Isn't it obvious that capital expenditures are still substantial - if anything perhaps higher (cf. google, facebook, microsoft etc)

    1. Everyone is overloaded with information thanks to the digital revolution, so—the PKM people tell us—we need new software and systems to survive and thrive.

      Information overload goes back much further in history than the digital revolution. I might argue that information managers have tamed large portions of the beast already and we've forgotten many of the methods and as a result we're now either reinventing or rediscovering them as we transfer them to the digital space.

  17. Mar 2022
    1. He was, after all, one of the most influential promoters of the "school-as-factory" narrative: that the origins of mass schooling are inextricably bound to the need to reshape a rebellious farming nation's sons and daughters into a docile, industrial workforce.

      John Taylor Gatto is one of the most influential promoters of the "school-as-factory" narrative.

    1. What history teaches us about how autocrats lose power — and how Putin might hang on.

      Putin has spent a significant amount of resources on making his regime coup-proof and revolution-proof. His main strategy is to minimize any chances of coordination.

  18. Dec 2021
    1. 1 ευρώ θα παίρνετε από αμοιβή, 2 ευρώ θα σας τρώει ο πληθωρισμός. Θα γίνει της Βαϊμάρης…

      Η κοινή παρανόηση πως ο υψηλός πληθωρισμός == υπερπληθωρισμός. Οχι οτι θα ειναι ευκολο για την λαϊκή οικογενεια, ή οτι δεν θα γινουν εξεγερσεις.

  19. Nov 2021
    1. Sixty years ago, in France, the first Napoleon made great changes, mostly useful ones, in methods of education. For more than a generation the government schools of arts and trades, arts and manufactures, bridges and highways, mines, agriculture, and commerce, have introduced hundreds of well-trained young men every year into the workshops, factories, mines, forges, public works, and counting-rooms of the empire. These young men begin as subalterns, but soon become the commissioned officers of the army of industry.

      Notice the focus of turning education here toward servicing the industrial revolution.

  20. Oct 2021
    1. White finds reason for optimism: the end of protest inaugurates a new era of social change.

      Beginning, Middle, End

      Micah White wrote of the end: The End of Protest.

      Micah White is the award-winning activist who co-created Occupy Wall Street, a global social movement, while an editor of Adbusters magazine.

      Occupy Wall Street was a constructive failure but not a total failure. Occupy demonstrated the efficacy of using social memes to quickly spread a movement, shifted the political debate on the fair distribution of wealth, trained a new generation of activists who went on to be the base for movements ranging from campus fossil fuel divestment to Black Lives Matter protests. Occupy launched many local projects that will have lasting small-scale impact. Occupy buoyed many institutional activist organizations that were able to materially profit from the renewed interest in protest. All of these are signs that our movement was culturally influential. It may be comforting to believe that Occupy splintered into a thousand shards of light. However, an honest assessment reveals that Occupy Wall Street failed to live up to its revolutionary potential: we did not bring an end to the influence of money on democracy, overthrow the corporatocracy of the 1 percent or solve income inequality. If our movement did achieve successes, they were not the ones we’d intended. When victory eluded Occupy, a world of activist certainties fell apart.

      I call Occupy Wall Street a constructive failure because the movement revealed underlying flaws in dominant, and still prevalent, theories of how to achieve social change through collective action. Occupy set out to “get money out of politics,” and we succeeded in catalyzing a global social movement that tested all of our hypotheses. The failure of our efforts reveals a truth that will hasten the next successful revolution: the assumptions underlying contemporary protest are false. Change won’t happen through the old models of activism. Western democracies will not be swayed by public spectacles and mast frenzy. Protests have become an accepted, and therefore ignored, by-product of politics-as-usual. Western governments are not susceptible to international pressure to heed the protests of their citizens. Occupy’s failure was constructive because it demonstrated the limitations of contemporary ideas of Protest. I capitalize p to emphasize that the limitation was not in a particular tactic but ratter in our concept of Protest, or our theory of social change, which determined the overall script. Occupy revealed that activists need to revolutionize their approach to revolution.

      Failure can be liberating. Defeat detaches us from a theory of revolution that is no longer effective, reopening the possibility of true change. “For a revolutionary,” writes Régis Debray, professor of philosophy and associate of Che Guevara, “failure is a springboard. As a course of theory it is richer than victory: it accumulates experience and knowledge.”

      (Pages 26-27)

    1. social evolution

      A Theory of Change

      How did we get here?

      Yesterday (October 26, 2021), I picked up David Graeber’s book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow, at Coles in Abbotsford.

      It is interesting to note that David Graeber was interested in the origins, the beginnings.

      Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death.

      https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/david-graeber-anthropologist-and-author-of-bullshit-jobs-dies-aged-59

    1. Στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα στην Αμερική, ριζοσπάστες αγρότες και βιομηχανικοί εργάτες προσπάθησαν να δημιουργήσουν μια «συνεργατική κοινοπραξία» στην οποία θα ήταν απαλλαγμένοι από την κυριαρχία των παράνομων αφεντικών που έκλεβαν την εργασία τους δουλειά τους, καθώς και από τους τραπεζίτες των Βορειοανατολικών πολιτειών και των διαχειριστών των αγορών.

      Ο [[Chomsky]] συνανταει τον [[Richard Wolf]] για τις κοοπερατίβες.

  21. Sep 2021
    1. em ? Puritanism, in its marriage of convenience with industrial capitalism, was the agent which converted men to new valuations of time; which taught children even in their infancy to improve each shining hour; and which saturated men's minds with the equation, time is money.128 O
    2. Once in attendance, they were under military rule: The Superintendent shall again ring, - when, on a motion of his hand, the whole School rise at once from their seats; - on a second motion, the Scholars turn; - on a third, slowly and silently move to the place appointed to repeat their lessons, - he then pronounces the word "Begin" . . .93 T

      Have we industrialized the humanity out of our society? Where is the space for creating identity, autonomy, and self-direction?

    3. and McKendrick has shown how Wedgwood wrestled with the problem at Etruria and introduced the first recorded system of clocking-in.87 Bu

      Josiah Wedgwood was apparently the first to institute a system of clocking-into work.

    4. ween societies at greatly differing economic levels). It is also that there has never been any single type of "the transition". The stress of the transition falls upon the whole culture: resistance to change and assent to change arise from the whole culture. And this culture includes the systems of power, property-relations, religious institu- tions, etc., inattention to which merely flattens phenomena and trivializes analysis. Above all, the transition is not to "industrialism" tout court but to industrial capitalism or (in the twentieth century) to alternative systems whose features are still indistinct. Wh

      Speaking about transitions within societies and cultures can be problematic as they are complex and intertwined between individuals, families, and larger structures and institutions. The transition to industrialization is often seen as a foregone conclusion when, in fact, it was a gradual struggle over time. Glossing over these types of transition can trivialize analysis of the complex effects at play.

  22. Jul 2021
    1. teaching is a very special art, sharing with only two other arts-agriculture and medicine-an exceptionally im­portant characteristic.

      Note here that this analogy only goes so far. The sciences of medicine and agriculture have come leaps and bounds since the start of the industrial revolution and our outputs and expectations for both with respect to humanity have increased tremendously.

      Not so with education. While we have dramatically increased the amount of information, there still seems to be a limit to how much an individual can learn.

      César Hidalgo calls this limit the personbyte.

      The perennial question for education technology is how might we get around this limit?

      The only solution in some areas is new discoveries concatenating and compressing some of the knowledge by abstracting it to simpler spaces, as sometimes happens in physics, but generally this is relatively rare. (or is it? justify...)

    2. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading.

      This underlies the reason why the acceleration of the industrial revolution has applied to so many areas, but doesn't apply to the acceleration of learning.

      Learning is a linear process.

  23. Jun 2021
    1. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.”

      Reminder to go back and read this.

      [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]]

  24. Apr 2021
    1. 1790> Morris Town (built by John morris (1745-1819) - apparently the first purpose-built workers' village (a precursor to Levittowns in the United States and Puerto Rico)

  25. Feb 2021
    1. Depuis maintenant plus de dix ans, des enseignants au Québec tentent de vivre dans leur pratique quotidienne une pédagogie ouverte.

      En pleine Révolution Tranquille.

  26. Dec 2020
    1. Since then, larger thinkers on the Quebec scene have argued whether this was the beginning of Quebec's Quiet Revolution — officially pegged for 1960 with the election of Jean Lesage as Premier — or perhaps just the end of a time when hockey was more important than politics, as the latter began to take hold among French Canadian youth.

      I definitely believe this was the beginning of the Quiet Revolution. It was definitely the incident that tipped the scale! At the time, Quebec was already a powder keg because of the great fight for the french language and against the overpowering of the Catholic church.

    1. No athlete has embodied the soul of a city and the spirit of its people as Richard did in the 1940s and '50s in Montreal. The Rocket's triumphs were the people's triumphs. In a match the previous Sunday, Richard had twice viciously slashed his nemesis, Hal Laycoe of the Boston Bruins, and then assaulted a linesman. Richard was then suspended for the remaining regular season. Richard had led the Canadiens to three Stanley Cups and had scored 50 goals in 50 games, but he had never won a scoring title and was on the brink of his first. The Richard Riot is generally considered the first explosion of French-Canadian nationalism, the beginning of a social and political dynamic that shapes Canada to this day.

    1. If only Santa Anna had not repealed the Constitution of 1824. If only Santa Anna had not dissolved the legislatures. If only Santa Anna had not killed every Texan prisoner. If only Santa Anna had not gone to sleep without posting a guard at San Jacinto. If only Santa Anna had done any of these things Texas would probably still be a Mexican state; however, Santa Anna did none of these things. In fact it was his failure to do any of these things that caused Texas to become an independent republic.

      This is good opinion/info to support my claim. If only Santa Anna had given mercy to the Texans, he could've used them against their side, and they could've helped him get more prisoners or win the revolution and continue his rein over Texas.

    2. At first Santa Anna's policy of execution carried the desired effect; all the Texans ran toward the American border (see map). However, his policy backfired. All the weak hearted Texan soldiers quit the army leaving only the hard core men.

      This is good to show how his execution of Texas soldiers wasn't working for him because everyone was willing to fight even harder, not going to die without a fight.

  27. Oct 2020
    1. Fifth, and most challenging, we can work to reverse the divergence between the centre and the periphery. The previous four elements would help with this. But greater policy efforts are needed to give regions, where possible, a critical mass of knowledge jobs so they can connect with the leading economic activity in national centres.

      These are all downstream (redistributive) fiscal policies - nothing here on seriously addressing the main driver of inequality which is a "closed" information economy. Having identified the source at the start Sadhu is failing to think through the logic. (Or i suspect not seeing fully the source of the inequality related to automation and IT ie. costless copying plus monopoly rights).

    2. These changes are not, on the whole, the fault of globalisation, that scapegoat of the populist insurgency, but of technology-driven changes combined with policies that have reinforced the underlying forces of divergence.

      +1 this is precisely argument of open revolution.

    1. There must be an ‘industrial revolution’ in education

      This first phrase is the most telling of all the issues we deal with on the edtech front. Because the industrial revolution touched almost every aspect of life since its inception, everyone presumes that it must also affect education.

      Sadly other than helping to make searching for and obtaining material much quicker, it still needs to be consumed, thought about, and digested by a student. The industrial revolution simply hasn't increased the bandwith of the common student's brain. It's unlikely that anything in the near future will expand it.

  28. Sep 2020
  29. Jun 2020
  30. May 2020
    1. What I Think Should Be Done  For the previously explained reasons, I believe that capitalism is a fundamentally sound system that is now not working well for the majority of people, so it must be reformed to provide many more equal opportunities and to be more productive. To make the changes, I believe something like the following is needed.  Leadership from the top. I have a principle that you will not effect change unless you affect the people who have their hands on the levers of power so that they move them to change things the way you want them to change. So there need to be powerful forces from the top of the country that proclaim the income/wealth/opportunity gap to be a national emergency and take on the responsibility for reengineering the system so that it works better. Bipartisan and skilled shapers of policy working together to redesign the system so it works better. I believe that we will do this in a bipartisan and skilled way or we will hurt each other. So I believe the leadership should create a bipartisan commission to bring together skilled people from different communities to come up with a plan to reengineer the system to simultaneously divide and increase the economic pie better. That plan will show how to raise money and spend/invest it well to produce good double bottom line returns. Clear metrics that can be used to judge success and hold the people in charge accountable for achieving it. In running the things I run, I like to have clear metrics that show how those who are responsible for things are doing and have rewards and punishments that are based on how these metrics change. Having these would produce the accountability and feedback loop that are required to achieve success. To the extent possible, I’d bring that sort of accountability down to the individual level to encourage an accountability culture in which individuals are aware of whether they are net contributors or net detractors to the society, and the individuals and the society make attempts to make them net contributors.   Redistribution of resources that will improve both the well-beings and the productivities of the vast majority of people. As an economic engineer, naturally I think about how money might be obtained from taxes, borrowing, businesses, and philanthropy, and how it would flow to affect prices and economies. For example, I think about how a change in personal tax rates might occur and how changes in them relative to corporate tax rates would affect how money would flow, and how changes in tax rates in one location relative to another location would drive flows and outcomes in them. I also think a lot about how the money raised will be spent—e.g., how much will be spent on programs that will improve both social and economic outcomes, and how much will be redistributive. Such decisions would of course be up to the people on the bipartisan commission and the leadership to decide and are way too complicated an engineering exercise for me to opine on here. I can, however, give my big picture inclinations. Above all else, I’d want to achieve good double bottom line results. To do that I’d:

      Not one mention of systematic change about information policy - nothing like open revolution.

      Core is some redistribution. Nothing substantive about how the basic mechanisms will change.

    2. The pursuit of profit and greater efficiencies has led to the invention of new technologies that replace people, which has made companies run more efficiently, rewarded those who invented these technologies, and hurt those who were replaced by them. This force will accelerate over the next several years, and there is no plan to deal with it well.

      This is huge - this is the essence of open revolution. Though he phrases it as a choice. The choice is in the rules we create.

  31. Jan 2020
    1. no difference

      The nature of the wants that commodities satisfy makes no difference. This is perhaps somewhat surprising to readers, given the extent to which everyday critiques of capitalist society often center around the role that consumerism plays and the subjective effects that this produces, namely, the way that consumer society creates all sorts of desires (as well as the obverse--many will defend capitalism on the grounds that it is able to satisfy our inordinate appetite for novelty by producing an enormous proliferation of desirable commodities). Yet, for Marx, the nature of these desires "makes no difference."

      It is worth pointing out that the critique of the appetites that consumer society spawns is by no means new (a rather early moment in the history of consumer society). We find it already on display in Book II of Plato's Republic. In looking to shift the terrain of the analysis of justice from the individualistic, social contractualist theory of justice elaborated by Glaucon, Socrates founds a 'city' based on the idea that no one is self-sufficient, that human beings have much need of one another, and that the various crafts--farming, weaving cloth, etc.--fare best when each person specializes in that craft to which they are most suited by nature. After sketching out a kind of idyllic, pastoral community based on the principle of working together to satisfy our natural appetites, Socrates aristocratic companion Glaucon objects, describing this city as a 'city fit for pigs'. At this point, Socrates conjures what he calls the 'luxurious city', at which point a whole host of social ills are unleashed in order to satisfy Glaucon's desire for the luxuries to which he is accustomed. Currency and trade are introduced, along with a more complex division of labor (and wage labor!), and quite quickly, war. On the basis of the principle of 'one person, one craft', Socrates argues that making war is itself a craft that requires specialization (and thus a professional army).

      For Plato, this represents the beginning of class society, as the profession military becomes a class distinct from the class of producers and merchants.

      Plato thus anticipates a version of a view that becomes one of the key theses of the Marxist theory of the state, namely, the idea that the state exists only in societies that have become "entangled in an insoluble contradiction within itself" and which are "cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel," (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State). The state emerges as "a power apparently standing above society...whose purpose is to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'" Engels writes, "this power arising out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly separating itself from it, is the state." Lenin cites this passage in the first pages of State and Revolution in order to critique the 'bourgeois' view that the state exists in order to reconcile class interests. In Lenin's reading of Marx, the state exists as "an organ of classs domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another," a view articulated in The Communist Manifesto, (cf. V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution in V.I.Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 385-497).

      Marx cites this same passage from Republic in a long footnote to his discussion of the Division of Labor and Manufacture on pp. 487-488, which also happens to be the sole place in Capital where Marx cites Plato.

      The fact that Marx here expresses indifference to the particular appetites that commodities satisfy is thus intriguing and ambiguous. Given that this question both clearly animates Plato's discussion of the origin of class society in Republic and, additionally serves as an alternative to the social contractarian view of justice that descends from Glaucon through Hobbes and the 18th century 'Robinsonades', this seemingly technical point also touches upon questions concerning Marx's engagement with both classical and modern political theory.

      If for Plato, the unruly appetites represent the seed of which class-divided society is the fruit, Marx's dismissal of the question of the nature of the appetites that are satisfied by commodities points to exchange-value and the social forms that it unleashes as being key dimensions of the particular form that class-antagonism takes in capitalist society.

  32. Dec 2019
    1. Falkland

      Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount of Falkland (c. 1610-1643), fought on the Royalist side during the Civil War and was killed in action at the First Battle of Newbury.

    2. and the field on which that patriot fell.

      Victor is referring to Chalgrove Field in Oxfordshire, where the revolutionary leader John Hampden was fatally wounded in a battle with Royalist leader Prince Rupert.

    3. Charles I.

      In 1642, the absolutist monarch Charles I of England (1600-1649) gathered forces loyal to him, and used Oxford as a home base to combat the rebelling Parliamentarian Forces led by the Earl of Essex, Thomas Fairfax, and Oliver Cromwell. The conflict culminated in the execution of the monarch for treason in 1649. See Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War 2nd ed (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 1998).

    4. Hampden

      Victor's admiration for John Hampden (1595-1643)--a leading English dissident opposing Charles I in the early years of the English Revolution--sits uneasily with his earlier nostalgia for the days of Charles I. Where the Creature had shown a consistent and clear sympathy with the radical Enlightenment, Victor seems as confused about the reactionary and progressive elements of the English past as he had about the modern and premodern versions of "natural philosophy" in the history of science. See also Iain Crawford, "Wading Through Slaughter: John Hampden, Thomas Gray, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," Studies in the Novel, 20.3 (1988): 249-61.

    5. we proceeded to Oxford

      No university in Europe could have been more the opposite of the University of Ingolstadt (where Victor learned his science) than Oxford University, the seat of theological learning and a holdout against any form of Enlightenment sciences. Victor is also initially nostalgic for the days of Charles I when the absolute monarch was beleaguered in the early years of the English Revolution (1642-1659). He later praises the republican opponent of Charles I, John Hampden. What version of England's political past Mary Shelley means to commemorate in this chapter remains an interesting question.

    6. Gower

      Sir Thomas Gower, 2nd Baronet (c. 1605–1672) twice served as the High Sheriff of Yorkshire and supported the Royalist cause during the Civil War. In his 1823 edition of Shelley's novel, her father William Godwin changed "Gower" to "Goring," the name of another Royalist leader in the Civil War, and the 1823 change is retained in the 1831 revision of the novel.

    1. Goring

      George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich (1608-1657), was an English politician and soldier, supporting Charles I against Parliament and an aggressive military strategist. His reputation for insubordination and "insolence" led the great English historian Lord Clarendon to remark that he "would, without hesitation, have broken any trust, or done any act of treachery to have satisfied an ordinary passion or appetite" [in Lord Clarendon, History of the Rebellion (1702-4)]. In editing the 1818 version of the novel in 1823, William Godwin had changed "Gower" in Mary Shelley's original text to "Goring," doubtless following Clarendon's History. The 1818 text had referred to another Royalist supporter of Charles I, Sir Thomas Gower, 2nd Baronet (1594-1651).

    1. oeuvre utile

      L’implication philosophique de Beauvoir n’était pas simplement une théorie, mais bien une pratique, qui plus est utile (entraînant la révolution).

  33. Nov 2019
    1. If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope.
  34. Apr 2019
    1. China’s tech sector is notorious for treating workers like machines, with extremely long working hours being the norm. The phrase 996 refers to 9am - 9pm, 6 days per week, and is an unspoken rule in a lot of Chinese tech companies. The CEO of Youzan, a large Chinese e-commerce company, seemingly didn’t get the memo about keeping 996 as an “unspoken” rule, and surprised his employees at their 2019 yearly company party by telling them Youzan is officially switching to 996.
    1. Despite the controversy Rumisa doesn't regret making the poster. "I'm kind of happy that my poster got a lot of attention," she says.

      Damn straight. Radiant doing.

  35. Feb 2019
    1. supported the aristocracy, from whom she benefited

      This bothers our modern sensibilities, yet the hirearchy of needs dictates that we don't dismantle social structures that help us survive. Ironically, it's the people who can survive without regard for those structures (i.e., the wealthy and powerful) who often do the dismantling. Or, as my father would say, "don't sh*t where you eat." Unless, of course, you can eat somewhere else...

    1. marked by revolutions in science, philosophy, and politics.

      Funny that (as the margin note points out) technology is left out of this list. Is this perhaps because RT addresses technology separately or that the significance of technological revolutions is overshadowed by these other changes?

  36. Oct 2018
  37. allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu
    1. while upon the tarnished headboards, near by, appeared, in stately capitals, once gilt, the ship’s name, “SAN DOMINICK,” each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings of copper-spike rust;

      The extended rebellion of enslaved people on Santo Domingo (in English, Saint Dominick) began in 1791 and lasted until 1804. Known today as the Haitian Revolution, the revolt remains the only "slave revolt" ever to result in the establishment of a free state. Per Wikipedia, "It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of racism in the Atlantic World.[5]"

  38. Jul 2018
  39. Apr 2018
    1. John Wilkes

      John Wilkes became a Member of Parliament in 1757, where he advocated for the right of voters, rather than the House of Commons, in choosing their representatives, and began pushing for parliamentary reform in 1776. In 1771, Wilkes, in support of Almon, convinced the government to allow printers the right to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. He further supported the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War, making him more popular among Whigs.

  40. Oct 2017
    1. various ways internet comedy and music keep alive the prospects of change in her home country, Egypt, encouraging young people to remain skeptical of entrenched power and ready to mobilize for revolutionary change when the moment is right.

      Comedy/sarcasm/satire is often viewed as a means of avoiding real issues, but I agree that these can be key societal preparatory tools when revolutionary change is needed. Looking forward to Yomna's work!

  41. Jul 2017
    1. Communism

      a classless and stateless society

    2. Social Change

      caused by conflict between the oweners of material productions and the producers which results in a change in the economic bases. This then leads to a transformation of the superstructure.

    3. Class Consciousness 

      social classes posses an awareness - of itself, the living conditions, the social world, - and futher their ability to act in their own interests is based on this awareness. Therefore, class consciousness has to be reached before the class can have a successful revolution.

  42. Jun 2017
    1. there was, essentially, no “scientific revolution” during the Renaissance, only a continuation of work that was already happening in the “dark ages” of medieval thought.

      This puts my whole minor field of study thought in question!

  43. Feb 2017
  44. Jan 2017
  45. Jul 2016
  46. Apr 2016
    1. promising effort to radically transform the scholarly publishing ecosystem much sooner and more effectively than other efforts (notably the “green” OA movement)

      First time I've ever heard this sentiment expressed, that Gold OA might actually prove to be the catalyst for change in the system. From the ScholComm Librarian world, Green OA is like our bread and butter. I think we're in the middle of a significant shift where we can and should start talking about spending the money differently rather than trying to change researchers behavior.

  47. Dec 2015
    1. Hypothesis might make a fine alternative to Twitter.

      • Is anyone using hypothesis in this way yet?
      • What would be a good tag to distinguish "tweet" Notes?<br> (I guess it would be cute to use "tweet" as the tag.)
      • When there's not a specific webpage involved, what would be the best URLs on which to attach such a Note?<br> (I suppose any page of your own on a social media site or blog would do. I also see that we can annotate pages on local servers.)
  48. Oct 2015
    1. 5. The American Revolution

      Week 10 Video Lecture

      Study Questions:

      What political ideas develop in the colonies as a result of Great Britain’s failure to fully define the colonies' relationship to the empire?

      What are the Sugar, Currency and Stamp Acts? How do colonists respond to these new laws?

      How do protests begin to broaden to include members of colonial societies new to public political participation?

      How do slaves and slavery point out the contradictions within the American Revolution?

  49. Sep 2015
    1. LETTERS BETWEEN ABIGAIL ADAMS AND HER HUSBAND JOHN ADAMS

      Study Questions:

      What does Abigail Adams mean when she writes “remember the ladies”?

      What is John Adams reply to her request?

      What power does she claim for women?

      Abigail Adams (1744–1818) wrote to her husband John in 1776, as he and other colonial leaders were meeting in Philadelphia in the Second Continental Congress. Adams wrote from Braintree, Massachusetts, where she was raising her four young children and managing the family farm. Although her days were busy with the duties of a single parent living both in a war zone — the British Army was only about twelve miles away in Boston — and in an area ravaged by a smallpox epidemic, she still contemplated the political changes taking place, and those changes are reflected in her appeal to her husband.