bit 0x01: 1984 and solarpunk
I’ve finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. I always felt that this must be a very boring read, but the recent rise of trumpism, MAGA, dark enlightenment and all these dystopian things finally made me pick it up. 5/5, highly recommended. Not boring at all.
It paints a picture of a totalitarian regime that utilizes new speak, surveillance and propaganda to control the population. Written with Stalinist USSR and Nazi Germany in mind, we see new crops of totalitarianism rise today trying to use similar tactics. The left makes heavy use of identity politics to restrict language and the right uses propaganda and fake news (like the ministry of truth), especially in trumps current administration.
An ideology must never prioritize power (or whatever ends it promises) over truth and human dignity. It’s a dangerous path to authoritarianism and totalitarianism from all sides of the political spectrum.
I agree with Kant here: if you deceive others, you’re treating them as a means to an end and harm their dignity by not allowing them to make a fair judgement call. And that by acting immoral, you harm yourself and degrade your own moral character. What I’m saying is: I don’t agree with the “the end justifies the means” principle in the broadness that it’s often being used.
Anyway, go read it, now, if you haven’t already.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell
discoveries
- Epstein didn’t kill himself makes interesting claims about the recently published supposed video evidence that he killed himself. This goes straight into conspirary theory territory, but there are some interesting points.
- Open Source Ecology tries to build an open source, modular “village construction set”. Pretty interesting!
- A solar powered website by the low tech magazine and how they do it
- mobilizon is a federated event platform where you can create groups and share events via the fediverse