On friendship

"Friendship is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die."

[...]

"In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves."

[...]

"The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence."

[...]

"But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."

David Whyte

Here

The ability to play gracefully with ideas and being alert

Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins in Conversation

Stephen Fry

"The ability to play gracefully with ideas..."
Oscar Wilde

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?”
“O limite do homem deve exceder a sua compreensão. Ou para que existe o céu?”
Robert Browning 


“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell

Knowledge vs belief and joking

Ricky Gervais and Richard Dawkins in Conversation


"If you could meet your 200 million great grande father, you would eat him with a slice of lemon and tartar sauce."
Richard Dawkins

"Particularly in comedy, most offense is taken when people mistake the subject of the joke, with the target".

Ricky Gervais [49:28]

The conviction of Count Dankula sets a dangerous precedent for freedom of speech

"There were an abundance of people who hated this “alternative” comedy as much as I hated Manning but that’s the point – comedy is subjective. You can’t say something isn’t a joke just because you don’t find it funny [...] The terrifying thing about this conviction is that the judge sided with the prosecution who said “context and intent are irrelevant” in a joke? In a bloody joke? Context is everything in a flipping joke!"

Here

Evidence of over spending is inflation | dept and investment

Does the rising deficit matter?

About Stephanie Kelton

"Money doesn't grow on trees, but it does grow on rich people".
"The super patent of the US dollar. It's a fact that the federal government creates it's own currency, issues it's own currency".
Quantitative easing...



Bernie's Economist Explains Why We Can Actually Have Nice Things


Where does money come from, that the government spends?
"Deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends, in a period of time, and the amount of money the government collects, in the form of payments, mostly taxes".

Marginal Propensity To Consume.

Value is not just price | Tudo vai daquilo que valorizamos...

What is economic value, and who creates it? | Mariana Mazzucato

On capitalism - Public and private interest... Inequality

Thomas Piketty on Capitalism, Corbyn and why Zuckerberg is getting it wrong - BBC Newsnight

Thomas Piketty

Times have to change — New Economic Thinking

Why Corporate-Led Globalization is Unsustainable

Profit shifting...
"International coordination is the most sensible way to address the [taxation] problem.
If Apple makes 10% of their global sales in France, then France could say, for example: 'we're going to consider that 10% of Apple's global profits have been made in France. And that's what we, France, are going to tax'. irrespective of where Apple's employees are located, or intelectual property, or irrespective of... All of that would become irrelevant. And so a reform like that, what economy is to call formulary apportionment,  which is a very powerful way to curb profit shifting. In the system that I describe, where you apportion global profits, based on where sales are made, you remove any incentive for firms to shift profits. It becomes impossible for them because, in practise what happens is that, France or any country, decides where the profits are taxable. Today we let multinational companies, basically, decide where. And if you let them decide, they'll decide to put their profits in Bermuda (tax haven). If you decide for them, by saying that you are going to look at where you made your sales (not something that multinational companies can manipulate), then it becomes possible to tax multinational firms. The beauty with this type of approach is that you don't need any international coordination. That is, any country, unilaterally, could say, tomorrow that's how we are going to tax multinational companies."

Times, they are a changing...

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
Milton Friedman


"Changing the world is a thankless task. There’s no moment of triumph when your adversaries humbly acknowledge you were right. In politics, the best you can hope for is plagiarism".

The Overton Window.

Here

Uma imagem vale mil palavras

"Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village. Her husband, on the other hand, did not seem to care where his books were, so long as they were where he put them."
The Recognitions, William Gaddis [pg 83]

Europe is lost

Kate Tempest - Europe Is Lost (Official Video)

I have no real job... Fuck the bread...

"What does it mean to be worth something? Or worth enough? Or worthless? What does it mean to earn a living? What does it mean to be hired? What does it mean to be let go? [...] As I empty the bags and touch the moss, and the leaves, and the twigs, and the berries, and a robin-blue eggshell, I consider how much we depend on useless, arbitrary tasks to prove ourselves. I consider how much we depend on these tasks so we can say, at the very end, we succeeded. [...] Our criteria for earning a life, a living, is mutating like a virus that wants badly to stay alive."
Here

:) A hot Sunday in Paris

"It was the dead heat of Paris summer, when Paris cats go to sleep on Paris windowsills, and ledges high up, and fall off, and plunge through the glass roof of the lavabo. The center of the city was empty. A sight-seeing bus set off from the Place de l'Opéra. A truck and a Citroën smashed before the Galeries Lafayette. At the Pont d'Auteuil, a man's body was dragged out of the Seine with a bicycle tied to it. Among the fixtures, tiled and marbled shapes remindful of a large outdoor bathroom, in the cemetery at Montrouge a widower argued with his dead wive's lover over who had the right to place flowers on her grave. In front of the Bourse, a deaf-mute soccer team carried on conversation in obstreperous silence. On the Quai du Pont Neuf, a Frenchman sat picking his nose. Then he put his arm around his girl and kissed her. Then he picked his nose. It was Sunday in Paris, and very quiet."
The Recognitions, William Gaddis, pg 74

Symphony of Science

Here

Symphony of Science is a view of our universe through the prism of music. The series puts a new spin on science by remixing lectures, documentaries, and movies into music videos celebrating the most mind-blowing knowledge we have. The videos have been used in classrooms around the world as a means to get people interested in science. Since its launch in Fall 2009, Symphony of Science has been featured on CNN, NPR, Wired, Adult Swim, and more, attracting over 50 million views online. The first single, A Glorious Dawn, found release on Jack White's Third Man Records label as a special 7” vinyl single.

A girl with a statement — Fire On Babylon

Sinead O'connor Behind The Music

Mother

Marina Abramovic on Belgrade culture and her roots

Mother

HIDDEN MOTHER - Rhythm 10 (The Star) by Marina Abramovic

...

Fiona Apple: “Hot Knife” (Official Music Video)

Understanding the Narcissist

Narcissist Parents are hurt machines to their children: here
What the narcissist fears the most: here
Raised by a narcissist: here
The narcissist's mantra: "You made me do it"
Are you a narcissist host?: here

da carneirada

Flow

"In Thomas Mann's preface to The Short Novels of Dostoevsky, he writes that Nietzsche felt "all intelectual isolation and alienation from civil norm, all mental autonomy and ruthlessness, are related to the criminal's mode of life and afford an experiential insight into it. It seems to me that we can go on for ever farther and say that all creative originality, all artistry in the widest sense of the word, does just that. The French painter and sculpture Degas once made the remark that the artist must approach his work in the same frame of mind in which the criminal commits his deed." (Dial Press, 1945, p. xii). [Keith McMullen]

Taken from here.

Carpet patterns named after artists

Konya 18th century carpet with Memling gul design.

Mais, aqui

The art of Fake / Confirmation Bias / Echo chambres

Van Meegeren The Forger Who Fooled the Nazis

About, Han van Meegeren
Van Meegeren, website

Abraham Bredius and Dirk Hannema looking at The Supper at Emmaus

Frida Kahlo - Virtual tour

Virtual tour, here

A pedagogia libertária: historia e vigência actual

La pedagogía libertaria: historia y vigencia actual