Find the first gameplay reveal for Dreams on a Pillow - an upcoming pseudo-stealth adventure game set during the Palestinian Nakba of 1948. Currently Crowdfunding on Launchgood!

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It used to strike me as astonishing how the peoples of the Global South share the same sentiments toward their former colonizer. But in reality, this uniformity of sentiment and thought is merely a product of the material conditions of colonialism which are the same everywhere.

Fanon, in his renowned work, was able to crystallize these sentiments through a rigorous analysis of the anti-colonial war and the political, economic, social, and cultural emancipation of the colonized. “[D]ecolonization,” he writes, “is quite simply the substitution of one “species” of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total, and seamless.” However, decolonization or total independence are not so simple in reality, as long as the colonizer is never ready to relinquish their colonial "property." Ultimately, “[t]he well-being and progress of Europe were built with the sweat and corpses of Blacks, Arabs, Indians, and Asians”; and this the European cannot give up without losing an essential part of oneself. Faced with the colonizer’s threats (“If you want independence, take it and go back to the Middle Ages”), the national liberation movement has only one of two possibilities: either the nationalist leaders would acquiesce and submit to the colonizer's will, or the underdeveloped nation shall endure the poverty that comes with independence. For even if political independence was achieved, it would be meaningless without economic sovereignty, which is the point of contention with the colonizer. Thus, “[t]he apotheosis of independence becomes the curse of independence.” “In the first scenario, the newly independent and underdeveloped nation makes concessions to its former colonial power: it signs economic and monetary agreements that make it economically dependent, accepts small injections of funds from the former colonial power to bolster its budget and adopts capitalism, enshrining the private property of the former colonists, which was previously acquired by force.

In the second scenario, which is no less arduous than the first, the national movement has no choice but to demand sacrifice from the starving people, to “ask them to make a gigantic effort.”

These famished individuals are required to undergo a regime of austerity, these atrophied muscles are required to work out of all proportion. An autarkic regime is established and each state, with the pitiful resources at its disposal, endeavors to address the mounting national hunger and the growing national poverty. We are witness to the mobilization of a people who now have to work themselves to exhaustion while a contemptuous and bloated Europe looks on.

Anti-colonial intellectuals like Fanon observed at the time the great battle between capitalism and socialism, which clearly manifested itself within the formerly colonized country. Fanon correctly judged that the conditions of the capitalist colonizer must absolutely not be accepted:

We know, of course, that the capitalist way of life is incapable of allowing us to achieve our national and universal project. Capitalist exploitation, the cartels and monopolies, are the enemies of the underdeveloped countries. On the other hand, the choice of a socialist regime, of a regime entirely devoted to the people, based on the principle that man is the most precious asset, will allow us to progress faster in greater harmony...

“The national revolution will be socialist,” thus wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his preface to this book. “if it is stopped in its momentum, if the colonized bourgeoisie takes over power, the new state, despite its official sovereignty, will remain in the hands of the imperialists.” However, anti-colonial socialism cannot be utopian or fantastical the way leftist intellectuals in Europe imagined it. The liberation movement must necessarily adopt a strategy of total and radical immediacy. The role of the revolutionary activist is crucial here. This is not their own war, but the people’s war. And this must be reflected in the organization of the revolution:

In an underdeveloped country, the party must be organized in such a way that it does not merely maintain contact with the masses. The party must be the direct expression of the masses.

If we want to increase the gross national income, reduce the imports of certain useless, even harmful, products, improve agricultural production and fight illiteracy, we have to conduct an information campaign. The people must understand what is at stake. Public business must be the business of the public. We arrive therefore at the need to increase the number of local cells among the rank and file [...] The masses must be able to meet, discuss, put forward suggestions and receive instructions.

Here lies the absolute manifestation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in which the revolutionary takes power and gives it to the people.

To politicize the masses is not and cannot be to make a political speech. It means driving home to the masses that everything depends on them, that if we stagnate the fault is theirs, and that if we progress, they too are responsible, that there is no demiurge, no illustrious man taking responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people and the magic lies in their hands and their hands alone.

To go back to my claim in my title, Western leftists and anarchists (not all of course) harshly criticise the "totalitarianism" of AES in the Global South because of their ignorance of the historical and material conditions that shaped the revolution, as showcased above, as well as the mechanisms through which Socialist regimes govern.

Socialism in the postcolonial world has always been under existential threat by the ex-colonial, capitalist forces. The DPRK, for instance, must be situated within the context of the dissection of Korea, the American imperialist war and the continuous threats to its sovereignty; Cuba within the context of the numerous assassination and coup attempts and the perpetual sanctions; China within the context of the imperialist incursions of the West and Japan, the foreign backing of warlords and the continuous fearmongering of Western propaganda, and so forth.

Moreover, the importance of this book for a Western reader has been succinctly expressed by Sartre:

Why bother to read it since it is not meant for us? [...] because Fanon analyzes you [Westerners] for his brothers and demolishes for them the mechanism of our alienations. Take advantage of it to discover your true self as an object. Our victims know us by their wounds and shackles: that is what makes their testimony irrefutable. They only need to know what we have done to them for us to realize what we have done to ourselves. Is this necessary? Yes, because Europe is doomed [...] Have the courage to read it, primarily because it will make you feel ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary feeling. You see I, too, cannot lose my subjective illusion. I, too, say to you: “All is lost unless. . . .” I, a European, am stealing my enemy’s book and turning it into a way of healing Europe. Make the most of it.

Privacy and Security

Secret Space Encryptor (SSE): File Encryption, Text Encryption, Secure Password Manager.

Valv: An encrypted gallery vault for Android devices.

Safe Space: A safe space for your digital valuables.

Deku: Deku is an SMS app that supports end to end encryption and photo sharing.

CameraFileCopy: use your camera to transfer data.

Alibi: Use your phone as a dashcam and save the last 30 minutes when you need it.

FadCam: Privacy-focused background video recorder that works even when the screen is off.

Media

Open Video Editor: Open source Android video editor.

Camera Date Folders: Sort photos from camera folder into a date specific subfolder structure.

SimpleTag: Tag your audio files.

Learning

Book's Story: Material You eBook reader.

DékaDico: Spoken numbers memory trainer.

Really Basic Vocab: simple flashcard app.

Lernkarten Eule: Practice with flashcards (math and Latin).

Flash Deck: A simple and easy to use flashcard to help you study.

Productivity

MoeMemos: An app to help you capture thoughts and ideas.

Games

Eat Poop You Cat: a bit like telephone with writing and drawing.

Quinb: A multiplayer reaction game.

INSTEAD: Interactive fiction games.

I was browsing Reddit (anonymously) the other day when I stumbled upon a curious post. A suicidal person writing their final words and thanking the people who messaged them. I remember them writing something along the lines of:

I know it will be painful at first for my parents, but on the long run it will be a relief for them since they no longer have to carry the financial burden of a 24 year old failure.

It strikes me how a young individual can hold such grim ideas in their mind. And what's more upsetting is the futility in convincing them otherwise, that their life has just started and they have so much to live for, not to mention the immense pain and suffering they will bring to their circle of people. Of course, I don't know what this person has went through in order to reach such irreversible stage, but I still firmly believe that, for the most part at least, nothing justifies the act of suicide. This conviction stems not from a moralistic point of view, but rather from a very simple and benign concept: that of curiosity.

I remember reading Emil Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born many years ago, not being able to comprehed how the author had such a laissez faire attitude towards life.

The book consists of short aphorisms dealing with the themes of death, suicide, the meaningless of life and so forth. Cioran's writing is very nihilistic. It expresses the many feelings and ideas shared by suicidal individuals; of failing to grasp the meaning of life, or the fear of not living up to expectations, the remorse of existing in the first place. By reading The Trouble with Being Born at face value, one might believe that Cioran was hanging on a thread between continuing his depressing life or ending it all right after his ink dries. Yet, it may surprise the inattentive reader that Cioran died at the old age of 84, having lived a mostly stable life—with the exception of dealing with chronic insomnia, which influenced his writing. Indeed, he even made sure to be as healthy as possible in his later life so as to not accelerate his timely death. So, what gives?

The source of the author's disquietude, as the the title of the book, stems from the problem with being born, precisely that we are not given a choice in our own birth. We are thrown into the world without any clear guide on how to live life. To Cioran, every object from which a person tries to derive some meaning, is a mere distraction, and the only thing which prevails is the inevitability of one's own death. This fact alone is surely to bring anxiety to the intellect, as one tries to cling to some intrinsic meaning and to certain expectations we have of our destiny.

Cioran writes, “I know peace only when my ambitions sleep. Once they waken, anxiety repossesses me.” Expectation and ambition imply that there are successes and failures. Success further invigorates the metaphysical framework of meaning we have built for ourselves. Conversely, failing to achieve our ambitions or to be up to our expectations provokes a critical hit to said framework. What then happens when we are hit with a succession of relentless failures in life, when this facade of meaning shatters completely and we are left with the approaching abyss of death? To many, the logical step at this point would be to simply take one’s own life. But here exactly where the common thread between Cioran and the suicidal nihilist ends.

To Cioran, all of our ambitions are, as already mentioned, mere delusions and distractions to our looming death. Yet, paradoxically, that there is no point to live is more so a reason to persist on living. As much as there is no meaning to life, there is equally no true way to living life. Failure is the purest form of being human:

This is how we recognize the man who has tendencies toward an inner quest: he will set failure above any success, he will even seek it out, unconsciously of course. This is because failure, always essential, reveals us to ourselves, permits us to see ourselves as God sees us, whereas success distances us from what is most inward in ourselves and indeed in everything.

In other words, by embracing failure, one becomes liberated from the expectations they or society have set. One lives life as it comes without preconceived expectations or prospects; one lives life as a curious mystery waiting to unfold.

What's the point of commiting suicide when life will eventually end? As Cioran writes, with a sarcastic tone, “it’s not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.” You are already born, it is a fact, so you might as well live your life to its natural end.

To go back to the claim I set at the beginning of this monologue, what prevents one from committing suicide should be curiosity to the many more experiences, interactions and, most possibly, fuck ups that life will bring before them. Not hope for a better future, but a relentless curiosity to what might come next, however inconsequential it may be.

I will end this monologue with one last quote from the book, which hopefully someone in need gets to read; it goes as such:

Astounding, the number of hours I have wasted on ? the “meaning” of what exists, of what happens…. But that “what” has no meaning, as all serious minds know. Hence they devote their time and their energy to more useful undertakings.

I was recently using this fork before it was recently archived. It seems that every dev who puts their hand on it quickly backtracks (understandably so) that it became almost like a curse. Anyways, is anybody aware of a fork that it is still actively developed and maintained? Thanks.

P.S. I know there are other open source apps with a similar function, but I am looking specifically for the unique design which ViMusic has for its UI.

I've been looking to buy the FP-30X for some time now. However, I don't live in the west. The prices here range between 1300 to 1500 USD. When I looked on foreign websites, the prices were around 800-900 euros. Can anyone residing in EU or NA confirm this? Thanks.

I noticed that I'm not receiving any new posts from Hexbear since last month. Did we defederate or something?

Mason & Dixon is classified as a “postmodernist” novel. I was intrigued by what the usage of the word here entailed. Postmodernism in literature refers to an abandonment of “absolute meaning” that is seen in modernist and realist literature and espousal of fragmentation, playfulness and incertitude, as well as the usage of literary methods such as metafiction and intertextuality.

This then makes of M&D a postmodernist literary work. The narrator, a certain Rev. Cherrycoke, who tells the adventures of two (historically real) astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, arouses one too many times the suspicion and doubt of his audience in regards to the veracity of what he is narrating. Throughout the novel, Cherrycoke's authority is put into question time after time, as he mixes historical accounts with speculation, fabrication or, indeed, mere fantasy. From talking animals to conversing clocks and a flying, mechanical (quasi-omnipotent) duck; fiction and reality intermingle. Pinchon/Cherrycoke takes liberty in designing actual historical figures as either he or the circumstances please. Another thing that caught my attention was the capitalisation of words mid sentence; as I found out, besides highlighting the importance of a words, it serves as reference to the practice of randomly capitalising words in old print.

As for the content itself, the novel critically presents several serious themes, some of which it demystifies. The two protagonists come to realize the grim reality of the colonial ventures and their exploitative consequences which they find themselves in the midst of:

Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom’d to re-encounter thro’ the World this public Secret, this shameful Core. . . . Pretending it to be ever somewhere else, with the Turks, the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they’re murdering and dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World, passing daily into the Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools . . . (Ch. 71)

‘Sir, an hundred twenty lives were lost!’ “I reply, ‘British lives. What think you the overnight Harvest of Death is, in Calcutta alone, in Indian lives?— not only upon that one Night, but ev’ry Night, in Streets that few could even tell you how to get to,— Street upon desperate Street, till the smoke of the Pyres takes it all into the Invisible, yet, invisible, doth it go on. All of which greatly suiteth the Company, and to whatever Share it has negotiated, His Majesty’s Government as well.’ (Ch. 14)

“Sooner or later,” Dixon far too brightly, “— a Slave must kill his Master. It is one of the Laws of Springs.” (Ch. 72)

On the other hand, the book is not free of an incessant mystification which M&D battle with as the self-proclaimed “men of Science” they are. For instance, during their encounter, the Learnèd English Dog informs Mason, somewhat mockingly: “I may be præternatural, but I am not supernatural. ’Tis the Age of Reason, rrrf? There is ever an Explanation at hand, and no such thing as a Talking Dog,— Talking Dogs belong with Dragons and Unicorns. What there are, however, are Provisions for Survival in a World less fantastick.” (Ch. 3)

And again, after Mason perceives the ghost of his deceased wife:

He tries to joke with himself. Isn’t this suppos’d to be the Age of Reason? To believe in the cold light of this all-business world that Rebekah haunts him is to slip, to stagger in a crowd, into the embrace of the Painted Italian removed herself, and the Air to fill with suffocating incense, and the radiant Deity to go dim forever. But if Reason be also Permission at last to believe in the evidence of our Earthly Senses, then how can he not concede to her some Resurrection?— to deny her, how cruel! (Ch. 15).

“Get a grip on yerrself, man,” mutters Mason, “what happen’d to ‘We’re men of Science’?” “And Men of Science,” cries Dixon, “may be but the simple Tools of others, with no more idea of what they are about, than a Hammer knows of a House.” (Ch. 69).

I assume Pynchon expresses a disenchantment of sorts with the supposed “Age of Reason” which had been forcefully detached of its earlier, seemingly mystical, origins; perceived as a revolution that ineradicably changed the ways of logic, and which must be indiscriminately embraced, regardless of the cruel exploitation it may cause. In fact, M&D parallels what Pynchon had previously expressed in his 1984 essay “Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?”, in which he wrote:

THE word "Luddite" continues to be applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology, especially the nuclear kind. Luddites today are no longer faced with human factory owners and vulnerable machines [...] there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals and corporate CEO's, up against whom us average poor bastards are completely outclassed [...]. We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time.

...

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The term "neoliberalism" gets thrown a lot in intellectual and political discourse, yet with seldom clarity to what it entails. Some may loosely relate it to the de-politicisation of the economy, the weakening of the State in favor of private corporations, or even the revival of laissez-faire capitalism. While one cand find some truth in those assumptions, they inevitably stray from the ideology as conceived by the neoliberal intellectuals of the past century.

Besides narrating the marriage of neoliberalism and human rights (which we will cover later), this book sheds a light on what actually neoliberalism stood for. Whyte contends that what the neoliberals envisaged through their numerous gatherings following the second world war, was a new, global economic order premised on what they have termed the “morals of the market.”

[T]he ‘morals of the market’ were a set of individualistic, commercial values that prioritised the pursuit of self-interest above the development of common purposes. A market society required a moral framework that sanctioned wealth accumulation and inequality, promoted individual and familial responsibility, and fostered submission to the impersonal results of the market process at the expense of the deliberate pursuit of collectively formulated ends. It also required that moral obligations are limited to the requirement that we refrain from harming others, and do not require positive obligations to others. (Intro.)

Far from the early liberal concept of the "invisible hand" or the criticisms by opponents of “amoral economics,” what the neoliberals proposed was state interference for the sake of maintaining individualistic freedom in the market. Neoliberalism is what it is: it is not a return to the old fin de siècle liberal economy, but a solution to the problems that the latter faced.

In developing their moral order, neoliberal intellectuals played with notions of "civilisation" and "anti-totalitarianism." The Mont Pèlerin Society of 1947 met in the context of two fatidical events: the decolonisation movement in the Third World, and the drafting of an international human rights charter. The neoliberal discourse evolved in relation to colonialism and human rights throughout the decades. For instance, while neoliberal intellectuals were critical of the British administration of the colonies for obstructing the competitive market, they saw the decolonial movements as a turn towards "communist totalitarianism" which must be stopped in order to secure global free trade and the extraction of natural resources, in other words "neocolonialism".

Similarly, the intellectuals at Mont Pèlerin Society invoked many critical remarks regarding the UDHR. In particular, they sought to undermine the "superfluous" rights and prerogatives which it included, namely social, economic and cultural rights that, in the eyes of MPS, was a stepping stone for totalitarianism: welfare policies lead to socialism, socialism to communism and finally towards totalitarianism. Their criticism for human rights accrued in degree with the drafting of the human rights covenants which accentuated social and economic rights. However, the neoliberal criticism was not directed towards human rights per se, but the scope of said human rights. These intellectuals adopted a Lockean conception of human rights that limited itself to the protection of individualistic freedom and private property.

The theoretical doctrines of the neoliberals contended with the real-life events in an intriguing manner. Neoliberals supported several undemocratic regimes, namely in Pinochet's Chile where they enacted economic reforms and even defended the political crackdown of the Pinichet regime. This weird stance did not invalidate their defense of human rights and freedom:

Friedman’s argument in Chile was not that political freedom and economic freedom were ‘entirely unrelated’, as Letelier and Klein both argue.40 Rather, he argued that they were intimately related: property rights are the essential foundation of all other human rights, he contended, and a free market is necessary for realising the ‘equal right to freedom’. (Ch. 4)

In addition, the showdown between the neoliberals and human rights NGOs' investigating Pinochet's violations wa sless radical than what it seemed. NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Liberté Sans Frontières originated from a similar human rights discourse to that of the neoliberals, which limited the scope of human rights that are worth protecting.

Their [humanitarian NGOs] special contribution was to pioneer a distinctly neoliberal human rights discourse, for which a competitive market order accompanied by a liberal institutional structure was truly the last utopia. (Ch.5)

Whyte's critique of human rights and neoliberalism is very essential in this day and age, especially in a Third World inflitrated by humanitarian NGOs whose agenda serves the interests of global capital and reproduces the injustices of the past century's colonialism and coercive interventions in the affairs of postcolonial polities. Whyte's reference to postcolonial intellectuals such as Fanon and Nkrumah is also very much cherished.

I heard a lot of praise for Bulgakov's oeuvre in the past, so I decided to give it a go.

I have read Russian literature in the past by recommendation of family and friends who always showed much interest in it; be it Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov or Pushkin.

But recently I noticed that knowledge of Russian literature virtually stops at the onset of the revolution. When it comes to the Soviet era, there is a sort of intentional silence regarding the literature of that time, at least in the West and its colonized peripheries. Anecdotally, I once had a conversation with my mother during which she claimed that the Soviet period was a dark time to be living in Russia. When I asked her what's the basis of her statement, she said this is based on the novels she read, citing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The awkward smile on her face after telling her that these authors died decades before the revolution was priceless; bless her heart, but I am digressing.

When a few exceptions of Soviet literature emerge out of the iron curtain, it turns out to be some anticommunist rambling, just like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

Considering the critical acclaim, it feels wrong to say that I found it to be average. Was I supposed to cheer for the devil and his retinue as they terrorize Moscow? Maybe it's my ideological orientation which prevents me from fully engaging with the novel, and I'm alright with that. Though I did enjoy the chapters narrating Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Anyhow, was Soviet literature ever popular? Did it die out after the collapse of the union? Or has it always been curtailed in the West?