Laura

“The new enemy of the Enlightenment doesn’t believe in any kind of verities beyond personal feeling and experience. It has no use for statistics or numbers or data. It doesn’t hold any truths to be self-evident.”
― Michael Lewis, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

“My pants got charged with arson. (119)”
― Ramona Bennett Bill, Fighting for the Puyallup Tribe: A Memoir

“so long as there exists a Western self-conception that demands the appearance of purity at all times, it should be known that what shocks the most isn’t the cruelty or indifference. Many people’s governments are cruel, many people’s governments are indifferent. It’s this relentless parachuting of virtue. It’s these speeches and statements of eloquently stated concern for human rights and freedom and the demand that those who abuse human rights or withhold freedom be held to account. And it’s the way every ideal turns vaporous the moment it threatens to move beyond the confines of the speeches and statements, the moment it threatens even the most frivolous parcel of self-interest. What good are words, severed from anything real?”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“This era, the Enshittocene, is the result of specific policy decisions, made by named individuals. Once we identify those decisions and those individuals, we can act. We can reverse the decisions. We can name the individuals. We can even estimate what size pitchfork they wear. Or at the very least, we can make sure that they are never again trusted with the power to make policy decisions for the rest of us.”
― Cory Doctorow, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It