1/1 – 1/7
flipped the calendar page. wonder how often humans confuse consciousness with just vision.
pluck the fruits of industrial revolution in my every moment. expect next major scientific discoveries to be brute force computations. for example, the night sky scanning search for planet nine.
laughed out loud.
found the new york city department of health plugging gloryholes.
caught up with the ft. this mine will benefit serbians like diamonds benefit the congolese.
read hundred views. degas said hokusai not just one artist among others in the floating world. he is an island, a continent, a whole world in himself.
1/8 – 1/14
receive cdc memes ad nauseum. would take a stone-masonry class only to etch the words, “pardon our dust.”
discussed sun projectiles with sid. launching a projectile directly at the sun requires countering the force of this planet’s momentum with rocket fuel. launching a projectile toward other planets, also circling the sun with similarly-directioned momentum, costs far less fuel. the most fuel-efficient path to hit the sun with a projectile from earth involves exiting our solar system, then re-directing with (less) thrust after traveling enough distance for the force of the sun’s gravity to weaken.
aim to look as good as jacques-louis david’s socrates when time to drink the hemlock. he chose death over exile to bulgaria.
1/15 – 1/21
rode third wave to completion. wasn’t fooled by calorie-cloaking technique of dividing one beverage into 2.5 servings.
honed sarcasm. felt safer.
would love a population map of the north pacific as an animation over time, colored by ethnicity. russians brought european diseases to the aleuts.
read nausea (1938) by jean-paul sartre.
shanghai, moscow, algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. there are moments – rarely – when you make a landmark, you realize that you’re going with a woman, in some messy business. the time of a flash. after that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: monday, tuesday, wednesday, april, may, june, 1924, 1925, 1926
m. de rollebon, who was passing by and who believed in nothing, bet the cure of moulins that he would need less than two hours to bring the sick man back to christian sentiments. the cure took the bet and lost: rollebon began at three in the morning, the sick man confessed at five and died at seven. “are you so forceful in argument?” asked the cure. “you outdo even us.” “i did not argue,” answered m. de rollebon, “i made him fear hell”
how can i, who have not the strength to hold to my own past, hope to save the past of someone else?
i study him with a sort of admiration. what will-power he must have to carry through, slowly, obstinately, a plan on such a vast scale. one day, seven years ago (he told me he had been a student for seven years) he came pompously into this reading-room. he scanned the innumerable books which lined the walls and he must have said, something like rastignac, “science! it is up to us.” the he went and took the first book from the first shelf on the far right; he opened to the first page, with a feeling of respect and fear mixed with an unshakeable decision. today he has reached “l”-“k” after “j,” “l” after “k.” he has passed brutally from the study of coleopterae to the quantum theory, from a work on tamerlaine to a catholic pamphlet against darwinism, he has never been disconcerted for an instant. he has read everything; he has stored up in his head most of what anyone knows about parthenogenesis, and half the arguments against vivisection. there is a universe behind and before him. and the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left: he will say to himself, “now what?”
1/22 – 1/31
spent whole life thinking klondike and polar were synonyms.
hate surprises.
read pankaj mishra’s the central language of justice.
du bois and other civil rights leaders echoed the argument of many anti-colonial activists that legal and political rights were impossible to achieve without economic security, and that a mere ban on discrimination would not address centuries of devastation. they ran into vigorous opposition not only from white supremacists among southern democrats and conservative republicans, but also from their supposed allies: the truman administration and eleanor roosevelt, for example, who told du bois that he was embarrassing the united states before the soviet union. none of them wanted the un to have any influence in the domestic arrangements of the us. eventually, the naacp caved in to the defenders of white supremacy, and sidelined du bois. abandoning its own broad definition of human rights, the naacp settled for the narrow aim of legal equality. not surprisingly, deep inequalities in education, healthcare and housing persist to this day: the logic of a human rights movement born and nurtured under the american imperium
the thatcherite assumption that there is no alternative is no longer tenable
Kartika Upadhyaya 