Go Go RocketParty

Governments that issue their own money don’t have to pay off their debts. They actually can’t. In fact, they issue money — the money that’s necessary for a growing economy to operate — by deficit spending.

—The Meme that Refuses to Die: Government Debt Must Be Paid Back (via azspot)

(via azspot)

As I looked backward and forward in time, however, I had to face this awkward fact: America became more culturally stable between 1910 and 1960 as it became less economically and socially libertarian. As it became more economically and socially libertarian after 1970, America became culturally less stable: “The greatest generation was also the statist generation. Like them or loathe them, the middle decades of the twentieth century were an entirely anomalous period in American history. Never had the state been so strong, never had people submitted as uncomplainingly, never had the country been more economically equal, never had it been more ethnically homogeneous, seldom was its political consensus more overpowering.”

—David Frum (via azspot)

(via azspot)

Here’s the idea. Set up a trust for the movie industry. A bank account that we can deposit money into but only movie-makers can withdraw from. When you download a movie via BitTorrent that you watch all the way to the end, deposit $5 into the account for the movie. When the owners decide to accept BitTorrent as a legitimate distribution system, which someday they are sure to, they can have the money. The amount of money in the account is always public info. So it becomes an important statistic, part of the “box office” for a movie. Then you’d probably find a funny thing happening — independent movie producers who can’t get distribution any other way will start promoting this site as a legitimate way to pay for movies. It wouldn’t take long before the MPAA realized that there are a huge number of people who want the convenience of watching movies at home on their own timetable, instead of having to deal with the inhumane system the movie industry created for them.

—(via Scripting News - Dave Winer)

Can one really claim they earned it the old-fashioned way when their father was CEO of one of the largest corporations on earth and at the head table of a political party?

The problem with the bootstrap myth is that it represents the assertion of autonomy.

The assertion of autonomy is entrenched in the secular faith that champions human sovereignty and self-sufficiency. It preaches radical self-reliance and denies a costly responsibility for others.

—(via Ethics Daily - Debunking the Bootstrap Myth)

Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.

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Jonathan Franzen (via azspot)

Jonathan Franzen explaining why he’s slowly going to replace his print collection with novels chiselled into stone tablets.

(via azspot)

“…here and there among the conformist fat-cat crowds is a lean cat or two looking like it might swing, given some encouragement.”

The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized.

—(via The New Yorker)

So this post makes it sound like you should support this. I’ll assume they didn’t intend that, a passionate mistype. It you do support it, you should be fucked in the eye socket by hyenas forever. Fight for equal rights. Always.

(Source: shamartha08, via ageofreason)