Subsidence
"The places that really have high levels of subsidence are Asia," says Nicholls, who was one of the authors of a recent study that analyzed sinking cities across the U.S. Asia is at higher risk, he say, because many Asian cities are built on river deltas that are prone to sinking when you put heavy buildings on top and pump groundwater out from below. The places that are sinking most rapidly in the U.S., such as New Orleans, share that geology. - NPR
“Quantity has a quality all its own.” – Joseph Stalin
"I don't want fans, I want comrades. This is a struggle. This is not lifestyle, this is not showbusiness. This is a major struggle for the spirit of humanity, and Germany is a battleground. Because once again, a proud nation- a proud people, the German people- are being dragged by their political regime, not just the government, but the whole spectrum of their political personnel, including their media, of course. They're being dragged into yet another genocide in their name, with their complicity. As if the genocide of the Palestinians, rivers of Palestinian blood, can wash off their guilt over the Holocaust." - Varoufakis on Hasan Piker’s Stream
Three hours before polls closed on the first day of voting in a seven-week election, the Election Commission of India said turnout ranged between 40% in the large northern state of Bihar and 68% in the small northeastern state of Tripura. "Voters show great enthusiasm as polling reaches halfway mark," an election panel spokesperson posted on X. "Substantial voter turnout reported." The first of seven phases of voting, Friday's ballot covered 166 million voters in 102 constituencies across 21 states and territories — from southern Tamil Nadu to Arunachal Pradesh on India's Himalayan border with China. The world's most populous nation, India is home to nearly a billion eligible voters. The entire election will run through June 1, with results set for June 4. - DW
(Indian Leader) Modi has kept the support of many of the poor, however, through a combination of Hindu chauvinism and highly subsidised food and cooking gas. He has also presided over an infrastructure expansion that includes LED lights in villages and cheap phones and mobile data. He argues that building highways and airports shows that India is becoming a modern power. - Solidarity
If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called “Liquid Death.”
"behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution" - Theories of German Fascism, W. Benjamin
“Fascism stresses the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf of society. … For Liberalism [i.e., individualism], the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.” - Alfredo Rocco, who was Minister of Justice under Mussolini
Linus Torvalds takes on evil developers, hardware errors and 'hilarious' AI hype: Hohndel's final question was whether Torvalds saw himself doing another big project after Linux and Git. Torvalds hopes not. He replied, "I hope it never happens. I say that because every single project I've started has always started from me being frustrated with other people being incompetent or money-grabbing. The reason I started Linux was that I couldn't afford the real thing. And I said, 'How hard can it be?' The answer is it can be pretty hard because here I am, 33 years later, and I'm still working on it."
A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers. - NOLA
Anatomy of a stunt: How to set yourself on fire and survive
Roger Allen LaPorte (July 16, 1943 – November 10, 1965) was a protester of the Vietnam War who set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York City on November 9, 1965, to protest the United States involvement in the war. A former seminarian, he was a member of the Catholic Worker Movement at the time of his death.
(F)or the Christian, the God-forsakenness of Christ is experienced as the source of faith, and for the atheist, it is its termination. Both, however, are shares in the experience and power of the Cross, but the logic here is not one of sense or meaning, rather of the non-sense of the Witz, the perfectly sharp navel of the joke. …or Žižek and Benedict, the power of the Gospel is too precious a largesse to be excluded from the discourse of European culture, and too potent a dose to be given over to the fundamentalists, believing and nonbelieving alike, who will only remake it in their own image.- Žižek Has a Lot to Say About Christ, but Should the Church Listen?
To a team member’s opening question (“What is the most significant sound you hear in Jerusalem?”) one Old City resident respondent we spoke with offered: the noises in people’s heads. We all understood this. I’d felt nauseated, exhilarated, righteously angry, broken-heartedly compassionate, suffocated, pinned down, free-floating, utterly immanent and blissfully transcendent: pulled and pushed by sensory and emotional overload and crushed by anxiety about how to represent or make sense. - Sociological Fiction
The superego is the imperative of jouissance — Enjoy!” “All of our seemingly moral impulses and the pangs of conscience that follow are modes of obeying this imperative” to enjoy, says McGowan. “AUTHENTIC... ACTION REQUIRES A REJECTION OF THE SUPEREGO’S IMPERATIVES,” - Todd McGowan
Although Freud uses three distinct terms for the agency that propels the subject to act ethically—he speaks of ideal ego (Idealich), ego-ideal (Ich-Ideal) and superego (Ueberich) –, he as a rule identified the three [he often uses the expression Ichideal oder Idealich (Ego-Ideal or ideal ego), and the title of the chapter III of his booklet The Ego and the Id] is “Ego and Superego (Ego-Ideal)”. Lacan, however, introduces a precise distinction between these three terms: the “ideal ego” stands for the idealized self-image of the subject (the way I would like to be, I would like others to see me); the Ego-Ideal is the agency whose gaze I try to impress with my ego image, the big Other who watches over me and propels me to give my best, the ideal I try to follow and actualize; and the superego is this same agency in its revengeful-sadistic, punishing, aspect. The underlying structuring principle of these three terms is clearly Lacan’s triad Imaginary-Symbolic-Real: ideal ego is imaginary, what Lacan calls the “small other,” the idealized double-image of my ego; Ego-Ideal is symbolic, the point of my symbolic identification, the point in the big Other from which I observe (and judge) myself; superego is real, the cruel and insatiable agency which bombards me with impossible demands and which mocks my failed attempts to meet them, the agency in the eyes of which I am all the more guilty, the more I try to suppress my “sinful” strivings and meet its demands—the old cynical Stalinist motto about the accused at the show trials who professed their innocence (“the more they are innocent, the more they deserve to be shot”) is superego at its purest. - A Letter That Did Arrive at its Destination
Ocean spray emits more PFAS than industrial polluters, study finds: Research into release of ‘forever chemicals’ raises concerns about contamination and human exposure along world’s coastlines. Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines. - Guardian
UAW and Shawn Fein: The landslide win will make the Chattanooga factory the first auto plant in the South to unionize via election since the 1940s and the first foreign-owned auto plant in the South to do so…"You all have just done the most important thing a working class person can do, and that is stand up," Fain told workers at the count watch party. - Impossible —> Possible
Straight from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University — the Vice President of UAW Local 2710 extends solidarity to the Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, TN who just voted to form a union with @uaw! From the labor movement to the struggle for a free Palestine, working people are taking back their power in historic battles this weekend.
Croatian election results: Populist wins chance to steer Zagreb away from pro-EU, pro-Ukraine path