“When you fight, you sometimes win; when you don’t, you always lose.” — Rebecca Solnit, 2013 as Year Zero for Us — and Our Planet | TomDispatch
“
For the aging Wall Street speculator stepping out for an evening to squander his investment in Viagra. For the damsel in distress shopping around for a nose like the one seen advertised in a painting by Botticelli. For the distracted child depending on a therapeutic jolt of Adderall to learn to read the Constitution. For the stationary herds of industrial-strength cows so heavily doped with bovine growth hormone that they require massive infusions of antibiotic to survive the otherwise lethal atmospheres of their breeding pens. Visionary risk-takers, one and all, willing to chance what dreams may come on the way West to an all-night pharmacy.
The war against human nature strengthens the fear of one’s fellow man. The red, white, and blue pills sell the hope of heaven made with artificial sweeteners.
” — Lewis Lapham, the former editor of Harper’s Magazine and current editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, writes about drugs, alcohol and all sorts of intoxicants in “Drugs and the National Security State” at TomDispatch.com[video]
“Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home — and of despair. And like despairing people everywhere, whether in a personal depression or a political tailspin, these activists believed the future would look more or less like the present. If there was nothing else they were confident about, at least they were confident about that. Ten years ago, as a contrarian and a person who prefers not to see others suffer, I tried to undermine despair with the case for hope.” —
Rebecca Solnit “Too Soon to Tell: The Case For Hope, Continued”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175701/
(via tomdispatch)
“The New Delhi rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, the 23-year-old who was studying physiotherapy so that she could better herself while helping others, and the assault on her male companion (who survived) seem to have triggered the reaction that we have needed for 100, or 1,000, or 5,000 years. May she be to women — and men — worldwide what Emmett Till, murdered by white supremacists in 1955, was to African-Americans and the then-nascent U.S. civil rights movement.” — Rebecca Solnit, The Longest War | TomDispatch
Syrian Death Map
Via the Guardian:
The conflict in Syria continues to claim lives, over a year since the war started - especially in west of the country. This map, created for us by the team at CartoDB, uses data from Syrian Shuhada - also used by the UN - and each circle represents the number of people who died each day. The play button starts the calendar of deaths, which can be paused at any point
Via CartoDB
One of these online activists involved in “the media war” is curating a casualties database based on information from several websites that have already documented killings or casualties from direct sources. The “Syrian Revolution Martyr Database” (www.SyrianShuhada.com) currently collects detailed info and links to 22.601 deaths since March, 2011…
…The Vizzuality team worked on the visualization. The map is powered by CartoDB to manage and serve the timeseries data and uses d3.js for the animated datapoints and graph.
The man behind the Syrian Suhada database —who did not share his personal information— launched the project in early May 2011. He designed the website and back-end database, and populated it initially with the first available data on casualties. Currently a team of 2 curate the data contained on the site
Image: Screenshot, Syria conflict: a year of deaths mapped. Via The Guardian.
Finally!
[video]
[video]
Rise of the Megacity - A megacity generally defines a metropolitan area that has a population in excess of 10 million people.
(via thisbigcity)