Merge branch 'main' of https://upchur.ch/gitea/n_u/nathanupchurch.com

2026-09-20 11:59:38 -05:00
parent f58d127d9d a604e6c95b
commit 1651c1f862
10 changed files with 252 additions and 0 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,192 @@
 export default {
 	quotes: [
 		{
 			quote: `…we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but that as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `They see a race of law-makers legislating without knowing what their laws are about; today voting a law on the sanitation of towns, without the faintest notion of hygiene, tomorrow making regulations for the armament of troops, without so much as understanding a gun; making laws about teaching and education without ever having given a lesson of any sort, or even an honest education to their own children; legislating at random in all directions, but never forgetting the penalties to be meted out to ragamufffins, the prison and the galleys, which are to be the portion of men a thousand times less immoral than these legislators themselves.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Law and Authority",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "An Appeal to the Young",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `It is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `…workers cannot buy with their salaries what they have produced and at the same time copiously nourish the swarm of idlers who live upon their work.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `…who would sell his labor power for less than it is capable of bringing in, if he were not forced thereto by the threat of hunger?`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `We know well the means by which this association of the lord, priest, merchant, judge, soldier, and king founded its domination. It was by the annihilation of all free unions: of village communities, guilds, trades unions, fraternities, and mediæval cities. It was by confiscating the land of the communes and the riches of the guilds; it was by the absolute and ferocious prohibition of all kinds of free agreement between men; it was by massacre, the wheel, the gibbet, the sword, and the fire that Church and State established their domination, and that they succeeded henceforth to reign over an incoherent agglomeration of subjects, who had no direct union more among themselves.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Far from living in a world of visions and imagining men better than they are, we see them as they are; and that is why we affirm that the best of men is made essentially bad by the exercise of authority, and that the theory of the "balancing of powers" and "control of authorities" is a hypocritical formula, invented by those who have seized power, to make the "sovereign people," whom they despise, believe that the people themselves are governing.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `We must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has, before everything, **the right to live**, and that society is bound to share amongst all, without exception, the means of existence at its disposal.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers — in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `To emancipate woman is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments, for her, for the "emancipated" woman will always throw domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her share of social life.
 			It will come to pass. As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words Liberty, Equality, Solidarity would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `…we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye off him; that chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those achieved under government tutelage.`,
 			author: "Peter Kropotkin",
 			work: "The Conquest of Bread",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Peter_Kropotkin_circa_1900_copy.webp",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Must you toil your life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread?`,
 			author: "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn",
 			work: "The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn_point_(cropped).jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "The Inimitable Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "The Inimitable Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Very Good, Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found… what appeared at first sight to be the Devil, A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Right Ho, Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Right Ho, Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Right Ho, Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "The Code of the Woosters",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "The Code of the Woosters",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Ring for Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other at the dog races.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `And shove him into a dungeon with dripping walls and see to it that he is well gnawed by rats.`,
 			author: "P.G. Wodehouse",
 			work: "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves",
 			headshot: "/img/quote-authors/PGWodehouse.jpg",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Observe people with cool eyes, listen to their words with cool ears. Confront feelings with cool emotions, reflect on principles with a cool mind.`,
 			author: "Hong Zicheng",
 			work: "Vegetable Roots Discourse",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Those who hoard great riches perish anyway. Being rich is not as carefree as being poor. Those who climb in life fall quickly anyway. Those highly placed do not rest as easy as the lowly and common.`,
 			author: "Hong Zicheng",
 			work: "Vegetable Roots Discourse",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Rhythms of the pine forest and sounds of streams upon pebbles are nature's murmurings when you listen in quiet. Firelight and smoky scenes at the grassland's edge, as well as clouds reflected on still water, are nature's superb compositions when viewed at leisure.`,
 			author: "Hong Zicheng",
 			work: "Vegetable Roots Discourse",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `In the midst of adversity, something gladdens my heart. In the midst of attaining my desires, sadness about my purpose springs up.`,
 			author: "Hong Zicheng",
 			work: "Vegetable Roots Discourse",
 		},
 		{
 			quote: `Larvae are unappealing, yet they turn into cicadas that drink dew in the autumn wind. Withered grass is lusterless, yet it brings forth fireflies that glow beneath the summer moon. Thus grubbiness in the course of things can produce purity, and dimness in the course of things can produce light.`,
 			author: "Hong Zicheng",
 			work: "Vegetable Roots Discourse",
 		},
 	],
 };
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 title: Mystery of the Goose Pear
 manufacturer: Kyara Zen
 date: 2026-09-02 10:52:47
 time: 10:52 AM
 ---
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
 ---
 title: Shirakawa - White River
 manufacturer: Shoyeido
 date: 2026-09-04 12:36:36
 time: 12:36 PM
 ---
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
 ---
 title: Capitalism Forced Me to Move House
 description: "This peasant has moved along."
 synopsis: "This peasant has moved along."
 date: 2026-09-06
 imageURL: /img/The_revolt_of_peasants_from_Haghpat_copy.webp
 imageAlt: "A painting by Eduard Isabekyan: The revolt of peasants from Haghpat in 1903."
 ---
 :::info
 This post is another that I accidentally published before I had time to properly review and revise. I forgot to mark it as a draft. I meant to tone it down a little, but here we are. So, sod it, I guess?
 :::
 As I [wrote about before](/now/now_2025_11_28/), a person chose to use her economic power and privilege to displace six people from their homes; as a result, I was forced to move. I'm fine, but I would like to take a minute to consider freedom, a virtue American politicians love to pretend to care about, and what that word means: freedom for who? Freedom to do what?
 Since my parents chose to move my siblings and I from a lovely little town in the Scottish Borders to a tiny sulfur-scented cesspit in west Texas, I've heard over and over again "I bet you're glad to live in a free country now!"[^1] As I looked at the desert around me, dangerous and nigh-impossible to traverse without a car, breathed in [the fragrance of rotten eggs](https://www.theexamination.org/articles/oil-companies-leak-toxic-gas-across-texas-making-local-residents-sick) from the drilling for oil, saw school-mates wearing the same hole-riddled shirts day after day, and reflected on how reluctant my parents were to take me to the dentist or the doctor lately, it was all I could do to avoid spraining a muscle as my eyes rolled violently into the back of my head.
 The Declaration of Independence famously states that all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including those to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But how can we be said to have the right to life when its necessities are locked behind a paywall? How is it that we have the right to liberty when our employers dictate who will enjoy the benefit of the profits derived from our labor, or when a landlord can remove the roof from above our heads at any time? How do we have the right to pursue happiness if the vast majority of our waking hours are spent pursuing the means to stay alive? The facts are these: if we do not have the right to water, food, clothing, housing, a clean environment, medical care, and everything else necessary to live to the furthest reaches of our natural lifespan, we do not functionally have the right to life. If we do not have the right to life, liberty is meaningless, an uncaring jungle, and the pursuit of happiness is all but impossible.
 You are not free to enjoy stable housing, because your landlord is free to remove your access to your home at any time. You are not free to pursue happiness, because capitalists are free to lay claim to all of the necessities of life and withhold them from you unless you spend most of your life in servitude to them. You are not free to walk down the street unaccosted, because the right of a police officer to extend their arm does not end where your nose begins. There's plenty of freedom about for the wealthy and the occupying army who serve and protect them, but where is the freedom for everyday working people? It seems that we're free to work or starve, and that's about it. Oh, and we can say aloud whatever bigoted opinions we like without legal consequences.[^2]
 Capitalism has had its chance. When unfettered by regulation, it [sent victorian five-year-olds to be mangled by machines during twelve to fourteen hour shifts in textile factories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_British_Industrial_Revolution). When tempered by government as a result of over a century of workers *literally [fighting and dying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike)* for the most meager protections, it continues to churn out poverty, homelessness, and [preventable deaths](https://capitalismkills.info/) [by](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-model) [the million](https://invisiblepeople.tv/capitalism-kills-nearly-1-million-americans-per-year/) as [a matter](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-land-of-the-dying-alarming-study-shows-u-s-killing-its-own-population) of [policy](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/18/life-under-capitalism-early-deaths-a-silver-lining-for-corporations/). Existence is not success. If an economic system is incapable of ensuring that all people are granted the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is simply not fit for purpose. We've tried letting it run loose. We've tried regulating it. We've tried mixing in a little socialism in the form of social welfare programs. It keeps ruining lives all the same. Capitalism is a failed experiment.
 The wealthy would like us to believe that the alternatives to an economic system that benefits them at the expense of the rest of us inevitably results in the Pol Pots of the world. They conveniently forget to mention that there are over a hundred years of communist political theory written with the explicit goal of [avoiding the natural consequences of allowing power to concentrate in the hands of a few fallible humans](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough). When people recount the crimes of communist regimes, they somehow forget to mention the communists that were critiquing, organizing against, and being killed by these regimes as it happened.
 I recognize that to many people, some of the points I'm making will sound like lunacy, but I would like those people to consider that A. there are a great number of very intelligent people who favor economic systems other than capitalism and it might at least be worth trying to understand why that is, and B. in a capitalist world, it is in the interest of every major power, institution, and decision maker that you stay as ignorant as possible regarding alternative theories of economy and governance, and this is reflected in the news, education, and entertainment you consume every day.
 With all that said, I have moved lol. Unpacking everything is going to take time, and as I no longer have access to a lovely large office to work and make incense in, we're going to have to be somewhat creative with how we configure this place. I quite like the street I'm on, and the neighborhood seems nice. It's also a benefit that there is not a cancer center for dogs across the street—that sure makes for some depressing scenes when you're sitting on the porch. I'm going to miss walking to the river to feed the ducks frozen peas and smell the locust blossoms, though. I missed my last chance to do that and I was so sad I wrote a haiku about it:
 > Inside cool houses<br />
 No tall locust trees blossom<br />
 How I wish I'd left
 I'm going to have to be intentional about visiting the river when the locust trees are in bloom. In the meantime, I have a new neighborhood to explore and a new home to make. And the person who chose to upend six lives for her own benefit is going to have to contend with what is now a very, very uncomfortable place to live as all of its charm and our years of work to make it liveable have moved out alongside us.
 [^1]: The stereotype is true. There really are Americans who believe that anyone who does not live in the U.S.A. is at risk of arrest at any moment for thought-crime.
 [^2]: Criticize capitalism, however, and you are branded an extremist and put on a list. How sweet does freedom taste!
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
 ---
 date: 2026-09-12 13:48:54
 emoji: 💰
 comment: Guy creates a fake classified program in the CIA and uses it to hide $40M worth of gold bars in his basement—work expenses, he says. [You can't help but respect the initiative](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/11/cia-officer-gold-bars-tentative-plea-deal).
 ---
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
 ---
 date: 2026-09-12 14:44:08
 emoji: 💩
 comment: "[Good read](https://tante.cc/2026/09/07/the-function-of-llm-based-math-proofs/) on LLM mathematical “proofs.” TLDR, like most of the LLM hype, they're bunk."
 ---