Burn the furniture.
brett [at] burnthefurniture [dot] com
archive | the illuminated thread
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Thus one of the greatest challenges ahead of us as the age of abundance ends is nothing less than the rediscovery of the possibilities of our own humanity. The work that needs to be done—and in an epoch of decline, there will be plenty of that—will have to be done with the capacities woven into the human body and mind, along with those additional capacities that can be developed in both by training and practice. The effort that nowadays gets poured into teaching people how to manipulate machines will need to be redirected into teaching them how to bring out the creative and productive capacities in themselves.
--John Michael Greer
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JAN.23.2012.mp3 173MB
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The first television advertisement was broadcast in the United States on July 1, 1941. The watchmaker Bulova paid $9 for a placement on New York station WNBT before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The 20-second spot displayed a picture of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States, accompanied by the voice-over "America runs on Bulova time."
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OCT.15.2011.mp3 169MB
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JULY.08.2011.mp3 211MB
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MAY.13.2011.mp3 211MB
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APR.08.11.mp3 177MB
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As males have entered into the housecleaning occupations once exclusively reserved for females, there has been difficulty in nomenclature. While males did not seem to object to being called "Nurses," or "Teachers," when they moved in to those formerly female professions, the deep gender association of the term "Maid" was seen as emasculating or demeaning by some. "Manservant" was an early attempt to create a male parallel, but now seems pretentious to many people and is problematic in its implication that servants are otherwise women. "Houseboy," was another parallel, but its use of the juvenile diminutive is considered demeaning to adult males. "Houseman" has a long history, but is not widely used today.
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phase_1.mp3 72MB
phase_2.mp3 75MB
phase_3.mp3 73MB
phase_4.mp3 77MB
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Is there any chance that we can learn to practice such mandatory austerity unless we can first be spared the widespread, deliberate badgering of people into wanting more, more, more? With the new paradigm we should begin to recognize the increasingly anti-social ramifications of advertising. We need to discredit and wind down this want-multiplying industry, perhaps even legally suppress it. In an overpopulated and resource-depleted world, an industry fundamentally devoted to making people dissatisfied with what they have, however respectable an enterprise has come to seem by standards derived from pre-ecological thoughtways, is an industry dedicated to augmenting human frustration. In an age of overshoot it is bound to foster the resentful attitudes that could turn inescapable competition into destructive conflict.
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Prosthetic Man: nature’s evolutionary breakthrough.
A shift from: (a) selective retention of organic traits on the basis of their adaptive utility to (b) selective retention of prosthetic tools on the basis of their adaptive utility.
They are detachable parts of extended human beings. The walls of our buildings and the shells of our vehicles are (like the Eskimo’s fur parka) a kind of prosthetic skin with which we surround our enlarged selves, enclosing mini-environments within them.
Blessed are the less prosthetic, for they shall inherit the ravaged earth.
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“What’s mined is yours.”
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A more modern example of intended ruins are the planned warning signs for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, which are intended to endure for 10,000 years, and yet still convey an enduring (if negative) impression on future generations: "Keep out. Don't dig here."
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Decades ago, Isaac Asimov posited three rules for robots: Do not hurt humans; obey humans unless that violates Rule 1; defend yourself unless that violates Rules 1 and 2.
Mr. Angle was asked whether the Asimov rules still apply in the dawning age of robot soldiers. "We are a long ways," he said, "from creating a robot that knows what that means."
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Text message responses to:
“One hundred dollars a barrel.”
Eric: Fuck yeah
Joe: Party time!
Nathan: Hurray
Katie: Oooohhh shee-it! party!
Brett CC: Insane isn’t it???!! They say its not going to hover there, its going up!
Sameer: One hundred bottles of beer on the wall.
January 2, 2008
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1. Conserve energy: get plenty of rest and sleep a lot. Sleeping burns ten times less energy than hard physical labor.
2. Save time: avoid living by a schedule. Choose the best time to do each thing. Work with the weather and the seasons, not against them.
3. Pick and choose: always have more to do than you ever plan to get done.
4. Have plenty of options: You don’t know what the future holds, so (don’t) plan accordingly.
5. Think for yourself: the popularity of a stupid idea doesn’t make it any less stupid.
6. Laugh at the world: make sure to maintain a healthy sense of humor.
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Canton, Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio
Flint, Mich.
Scranton, Pa.
Dayton, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Springfield, Mass.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Detroit, Mich.
Charleston, W.Va
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Here are statues which stand before the shores of Atullia and which have been set up for the safety of sailors; for beyond is the vile sea, which sailors cannot navigate.
