This should never not be your basic attitude towards the immeasurable universe around you.

To-day Rad Geek People’s Daily [radgeek.com]: http://radgeek.com/gt/2013/07/26/on-detroit/ On Detroit, or: Cities don’t go bankrupt, city governments do.

Fiscally responsible conservative government. http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/07/25/new-red-wing-stadium-should-be-unaffected-by-detroit-bankruptcy/ “Michigan’s state legislature approved Wednesday a $450 million bond offering that would form the public backbone of Ilitch’s Holding’s $650 million entertainment center and development district near the heart of downtown Detroit.” http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20130725/NEWS/130729909/detroit-taxpayers-to-fund-60-percent-of-red-wings-arena-plan-shows “Property taxes would pay for $261.5 million (58 percent) of the building’s construction cost while the team’s ownership would provide $188.4 million (42 percent), according to details provided by the state. . . . Those are July 2013 dollars based on bonds with a 5.91 percent interest rate. Critics have blasted the arena deal as unnecessary subsidies for a billionaire pro sports team owner in a city in municipal bankruptcy. Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, has said the city’s recent Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection filing won’t affect the arena project.”

(As of this morning, *almost* done with the massive backlog of work from ALL Distro from my time traipsing around. Then, onward to the backlog of writing obligations. . . . .)

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/07/white-house-opposes-defense-funding-bill-amendment-169053.html Change You Can Believe In (Vol. V, No. 7). Of course the President opposes this attempt at a minor restriction on unbridled Executive power. He is the President. And when you elect a progressive President, you’re going to find that the fact that he is President is always of much greater practical significance than the fact that he claims to be “progressive.”

Utilitarianism, ch. 4, “Of what sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible.” Probably logically the weakest chapter of the entire book, although the argument takes a somewhat more interesting route to its destination than I remembered, and actually throws out one of Mill’s most suggestive and important conceptual moves in the entire book, without (as far as I can tell) really knowing much what to do with it. Online here: http://fair-use.org/john-stuart-mill/utilitarianism/chapter-iv (altho I actually re-read it in the Everyman Mill collection)

Books II and III of the Aeneid: yep it is pretty much just going to get more gruesome and heart-rending from here on out.

“One can even argue that the military-industrial-surveillance state is being rapidly expanded to serve the economic interests of a few of the one percent through the protection of corporate and financial institutions — and putting in place ‘power projection’ on the international stage and suppression of economic dissent on the domestic level to ensure the viability and expansion of the anarcho-capitalist economic proponents.” http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18103-anarchistic-capitalism-is-the-real-goal-of-the-radical-free-marketers Complete with in-depth research on what “anarcho-capitalist economic proponents” believe — a whole paragraph quoted from Wikipedia. #YKUTWIDNTIMWYTIM

I am on Prometheus’s side here. http://xkcd.com/1228/

From a nerd thread on /r/Anarchism: “I love REAL Star Trek. I constantly point to the Federation as an example of Anarcho Syndicalism as praxis.” #UnclearOnTheConcept