Just beautiful all around — video art by @annaxmalina
https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/27/just-beautiful-all-around-video-art-by/
❝ For over a decade, a Chinese woman known as “Zhemao” created a massive, fantastical, and largely fictional alternate history of late Medieval Russia on Chinese Wikipedia, writing millions of words about entirely made-up political figures, massive (and fake) silver mines, and pivotal battles that never actually happened. She even went so far as to concoct details about things like currency and eating utensils. Using four puppet accounts, Zhemao—who wrote in an apology via her English Wikipedia account that she was a housewife with a high school degree—created one of the largest hoaxes in the history of Wikipedia, earning her the online nickname, “Chinese Borges.” ❞ *
She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed.
https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/27/she-spent-a-decade-writing-fake-russian-history/
Howard Zinn:
❝ To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. ❞ *
Kenn Orphan:
❝ Taking action is not “futile and fruitless” as those unaffected directly by injustice or oppression would suggest. And although it will not end injustice, brutality or suffering for all time, we should remember that it isn’t meant to. As Howard Zinn made clear, we possess an agency that transcends the brutality of our times. Indeed, “winning” is not essential to it, neither is achieving some fantastical notion of utopia. Our defiance to barbarism is the victory, and this is where nihilism fails on all counts. ❞ *
(photo at the top by Jason Rinehart)
https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/26/to-be-hopeful-in-bad-times/
❝ The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, “better” of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, un-curious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion. An eminently photogenic set of torii in Kyoto. There is no adventure — and probably little growth vis-à-vis the very definition of the word itself (though I admit this gets judgey very quickly; but you know what I mean) — in this kind of travel, but there is cost. ❞ *
Craig Mod with one of the best ruminations on travel (and, yes, COVID-19) that I’ve read. Highly recommended:
Covid. — Roden Newsletter Archive
https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/26/covid-roden-newsletter-archive/
❝ Most people walk away from their dreams sooner or later, usually in tiny steps that are hardly noticeable, the course altered by fractional degrees until it leads to a reversal of the poles. The childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut or paleontologist fades into paying down a credit card or finding low-deductible insurance. Big dreams die every minute in this country, crushed into the smaller ones that keep us setting our alarm clocks, buying paper towels, and checking the weather forecast. Lose enough faith, and you might forget how to live. Bills and bank statements begin to look like fiction, baffling abstractions that have nothing to do with the real business of being alive. Words like appointment or Thursday lose their meaning, and you increasingly find yourself spaced-out in the grocery store, struggling to remember what you like to eat. You might begin to spend time in bars or churches, searching for instructions. Some people will recognize this starved look in your eye. They will see you as a kindred spirit or easy prey. Either way, they will find you. And they will talk to you. ❞ *
If you only read one blog on the regular, make it James A. Reeves’ Atlas Minor.
https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/07/26/a-matter-of-degrees/