Wroom wroom!

Treating the whole thing as a rather poor leveling game, I’m burning through all available apps for getting a drivers license. The theory isn’t all that difficult, but my math skillz leave something to be desired. (i.e. How much does your total break time increase if you travel 90km/h instead of 60km/h)

Drivers license app

Still have no experience driving, and it is with dread I see myself behind a ton and a half of lusty murdering machine. Might want to meditate on that. Oh, and I might want to meditate on getting an El Camino.

Step by step, oh baby! (Fascism)

Excerpt from They thought they were free about the gradual changes in Germany that culminated in atrocities. Comparisons between anything current and 1930 Nazis falls under Godwin’s law, but it’s a shining example of what a slippery slope looks like.

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it.

As with so many other articles I link to, this one showed up in a reference over at Metafilter.

Also, my brother and his woman visited Gothenburg this weekend.

You people are rebellious.

A very timely twitter from @hotdogsladies: The Beatles recorded their debut LP, “Please Please Me,” in one 10-hr day. So. You know. Have a productive day.

And a time lapse video of some young people who stumbled in on our yard yesterday and proceeded to pitch a tent and piss on peoples gardens. I think they’re here for the music festival Way out West that’s happening now-ish. Goddamn kids.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/talt_pa_garden.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/talt_pa_garden.png 640 330]

This is your entertainment for today:

Metafilter user xlcus created a Flickr project that mirrors images. Put in your own search terms and lol away.

centre-mirrored image of an owl

Have I told you already that Jonas is picture blogging Berlin? Pardon my wandering eyes.

And a short time lapse of the bridge from the other night. Sooner or later I’ll do something original with this function, but for now I’m happy just emulating what I’ve seen on Discovery Channel.

[flv:http://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/bron_igen.flv http://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/bron-igen.png 640 300]

Science! Astronomy!

Earlier today there was a partial solar eclipse. I folded a strip of red filter and stood gaping at the sky. I got that naive “wow, the universe is awesome” feeling, and felt comfortable being a small dot on a slightly larger dot circling a yellow pea in the big great nothing. Then I went running and successfully completed week 5, day 2. Awesome!

Free will. Slick hair. Mirrored building.

As I’ve told y’all time and again, you ought to be listening to Radio Lab:

[audio:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_uploads/2008/07/finger-wiggling.mp3]

The above clip is from the episode on stress, but it offhandedly dismisses a great chunk of our free will by a small experiment. I had to listen to it thrice before going “oh” and “shit” and then telling my friends of this story while drunk and not able to convey the meaning.

I mean, seriously? our conscious selves are ad hoc rationalisations of our bodies’ behaviour? How is that not awesome and neat in how it turns our self image on its head?

Hus som speglas vid Järntorgen

Mateusz provar nya glasögon

Narrative. Doing shit. Paper curtain.

I was talking to Jonas over a couple of drinks, complaining about the lack of narrative to my life. He countered saying that we should be writing our own stories rather than look for signs of what manner of tale we’re playing a part in.

As a young pup I loved books with quotes and aphorisms. Here’s one from Theodore Roosevelt:

“Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.”

En gardin och en kanin. Gardinerna är gjorda av papper.