flaminm

in my opinion.

everything gets less complicated if you think love is just "a hormonal reaction".*

let's see what notable people said about love:

theodor seuss geisel:
you know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

taylor swift:
when you are missing someone, time seems to move slower, and when i'm falling in love with someone, time seems to be moving faster.

kim kardashian:
i think you have different soul-mates throughout your life, that your soul needs different things at different times. i do believe in love. i will always believe in love, but my idea has changed from what i've always thought.

oprah winfrey:
lots of people want to ride with you in the limo. but you want someone who'll help you catch the bus.

william watson purkey:
you've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
love like you'll never be hurt,
sing like there's nobody listening,
and live like it's heaven on earth.

elie wiesel:
the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. the opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. the opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. and the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

william shakespeare:
love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

neil gaiman:
have you ever been in love? horrible isn't it? it makes you so vulnerable. it opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

lao tzu:
being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

chuck palahniuk:
the one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.*

paulo coelho:
when we love, we always strive to become better than we are. when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

one is loved because one is loved. no reason is needed for loving.

mahatma gandhi:
when i despair, i remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. think of it, always.

where there is love there is life.

sarah dessen:
love is needing someone. love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.

oscar wilde:
never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.*

plato:
every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. those who wish to sing always find a song. at the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

john krasinski:
when you're lucky enough to meet your one person, then life takes a turn for the best. it can't get better than that.

katy perry:
first and foremost, self-love, and then give love away.

fyodor dostoevsky:
above all, don't lie to yourself. the man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. and having no respect he ceases to love.

edgar allen poe:
we loved with a love that was more than love.

sigmund freud:
psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

ideology that supports 1>1.

whatever hurts is true. belief that the truth must hurt to be the truth.

thanks for the invite.

it will completely erase shared culture.

in the '80s and '90s, people more or less watched and listened to the same things. the next day, they would discuss and critique these in the office or at school, sharing their thoughts with friends. with the widespread adoption of social media, instead of a collective culture, a niche culture that only followers are aware of has started to emerge. someone might become famous somewhere, but you don't know who they are, right? yet, they have hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of followers.

with the advent of artificial intelligence, this niche culture will be replaced by a completely "personalized culture." for example, think about spotify. you have marked the songs you like one by one. with the development of ais that produce good music, songs created specifically for you based on your preferences will start to play. no one else will know about them. you can extend this to films, series, and other types of content. thus, everyone will be exposed to what they like. in a way, it's good, but in another, it's bad. in the end, everything will become more individualized. there will be no common ground for sharing.

if i live long enough, i would love to see a high-quality ai that allows me to choose the actors in a film made just for me.

aldous huxley's dystopian novel published in 1932 has been the subject of debate since its release: is "brave new world" a dystopia or a utopia? to understand the genre of the novel properly, it's essential to look at the characteristics of dystopian fiction:

– the use of propaganda to control society
– restrictions on access to information, freedom, and independence
– society's adulation of a symbolic leader or concept
– society constantly feeling under surveillance
– society's fear of the outside world
– society living in dehumanized systems
– alienation from and disbelief in nature
– society conforming to the same expectations, resulting in a lack of individuality and diversity
– society being a reflection of a perfect utopia

huxley's novel exhibits all but one of these characteristics. the bokanovsky process and fordism in "brave new world" serve as tools of propaganda to maintain control. the book's representative of these themes is the western european world controller, mustapha mond. throughout the book, we see bans on science and art, and nobody is truly free. there's worship of the concept of fordism. you witness the fear of lenina crowne when she visits the savage reservation with john, who represents the outside world. the characters perfectly conform to the system, indicating the dehumanization of the established order. emotions, pain, or freedoms are absent; instead, they are replaced with sensory films and "soma," a drug they never part without. the isolation of john's place, the savage reservation, is an example of the exclusion of nature. characters are divided into classes, and each class is standardized. lastly, the book gives an air of utopia. except for the characters feeling under surveillance, the book perfectly encompasses dystopian elements.

the real issue, though, is huxley's choice of a soft dystopia over a harsh one. unlike 1984, where political oppression crushes society, "brave new world" offers its society a "false" happiness. this is what baffles readers and gives a sense of utopia: the characters are happy, but this happiness is tied to the system shaping them from birth and their frequent use of the drug soma.

in the novel, there is a robotic caste system: people are pre-programmed before birth as alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, or epsilons. alphas are tall, intelligent, and attractive, while deltas are short, programmed for labor, and stupid, with the intelligence of a five-year-old at most. thus, the lower classes, the deltas, and epsilons, are happy.

in essence, huxley has killed the concept of "human" and replaced it with "human-like robots," creating a utopia-looking dystopia. huxley's message is that it's impossible for humans to create a utopia on their own. if stability and order are desired, personalities must be killed and people must become dependent on drugs. the book lacks art, family, emotions, books, freedom of thought, or science. these are things that the system opposes because a robot does not need these concepts.

like "1984," "brave new world" contains a totalitarian regime, but instead of using torture like room 101, it aligns its characters with soft methods like the bokanovsky system and soma, yet the result is the same: society loses its freedom. the utopia "brave new world" provides is not for people but for humans who have lost their human traits. this is why huxley includes a character like john the savage. john represents "the human" in every sentence and action against the robotic system. what he tries to convey is that either we live in fake happiness as the system intends, or we feel real happiness like john, but with its pains.

in the sixteenth chapter, the conversation between john and mustapha mond mentions that they have given up science and art (or, in other words, their humanity) for stability and happiness.

huxley's model of utopia is a system cleansed of humanity. he does not envision a perfect political structure or educated people like thomas more, but a system that eradicates the self. that's why "brave new world" is a dystopia. replacing tyranny with happiness does not change the fact that it annihilates the human self.

as stated in the adaptation of the host, which also has a utopic dystopia like "brave new world," "our world had never been so perfect, but it was no longer our world."

social media platform that knows you better than your close friends. it can analyze your personality and tendencies after your 8 facebook likes.

aka truth serum. allegedly, it was used by secret service experts to make prisoners speak during corporal punishment. bbc's journalist* took it to show its effects. video

i am hodling

it looks like a scarier version of welcome to the game. i think the scariest part of this game is that you hear strange noises coming from outside while browsing the web. that's why it is really hard to focus on the tasks but also doubles your experience.

--spoiler--
in this version, the killer (aka the breather) may call you to make you listen to his breathe.
--spoiler--

the vmas don’t matter unless my favorite artist wins. then suddenly we’re witnessing music history.

if they lose, it’s rigged. obviously.

i decided to look a little more closely at norway, since it is one of those countries we seem to envy for almost everything.

i was honestly stunned. the story is almost too good.

norway had been in a union with sweden until 1905, when it broke away and became fully independent.

the norwegians wanted to remain a monarchy, but there was one small problem. they had no king and no royal family of their own.

so they literally went looking for a king.

yes, looking for a king. it sounds ridiculous, but that is basically what happened.

their first choice was the swedish royal family they had just separated from. norway essentially asked whether sweden might spare one of its princes so they could make him king. sweden declined.

so they turned to denmark.

there they found a suitable candidate, prince carl of denmark. he was scandinavian, had naval training, was young, and already had a son.

when the offer reached him, he did not simply jump at the chance. he insisted that he would only accept the crown if the norwegian people actually wanted him.

a referendum was held in november 1905, and the monarchy was approved by a large majority. prince carl accepted the throne and took the name haakon vii, reviving the name of earlier norwegian kings and tying the new monarchy to the country's older traditions.

and norway later discovered that it had chosen an extraordinary king.

during world war ii, haakon vii refused to submit to nazi germany and became one of the great symbols of norwegian resistance. this man had essentially been invited in from another country to become king, yet when norway faced its darkest moment, he stood by it completely.

you could not ask for much more from a monarch.

he also strongly respected norway's parliamentary system and became a lasting symbol of constitutional monarchy during the development of the modern norwegian state.

irma grese was one of the female nazi perpetrators, her career is explained as “full of depravity, horror, extreme cruelty, forced bisexuality, and murder.” she is known for performing her duties without hesitation and doing so without remorse.

in the prosecution of irma grese, having numerous witness accounts of her cruelty, grese still maintained that she did not purposely harm anyone. she denied many accusations of beating prisoners unconscious, sending them outside the camp to be shot or allowing her dog to attack prisoners. grese does, however, admit some beatings at the bergen-belsen trials, here are a few questions and answers taken from the trial transcripts:

• in lager "c" you used to carry a walking-stick, too, and sometimes you beat people with the whip and sometimes with the stick? - yes.
• were you allowed to beat people? - no.
• so it was not a question of having orders from your superiors to do it. you did this
against orders, did you? - yes.

grese’s responses to these questions demonstrate that superiors did not order her to take these actions. there is also the understanding that superiors felt the prisoners were replaceable; railways constantly brought in new prisoners, allowing camp guards to see them as disposable.

– 10% of the world lives on <$1.90 a day.

– at 3.75 tons, the rai stone is the world's heaviest currency.

– $21 trillion is thought to be hidden in overseas tax heavens.

– $80.9 trillion estimated amount of money in existance today.

– $216 billion cash reserves held by apple in april 2016, out of $1.7 trillion held by us nonfinancial companies at that time.

– 80% of small business start-ups fail due to poor cash flow management.

– $1.2 trillion the amount of us currency in circulation.

– $6.7 trillion the amount the us government spent in 2016.

– 1668 the year that the oldest central bank in the world, the swedish riksbank, was established.

– 31% of total global debt is owed by the us.

– 70% of the richest americans claim to be self-made.

–57,000 number of credit unions in 105 countries around the world.