marnanel @marnanel@anarchism.space

I think the Anarchist FAQ is good but difficult to read.

So I am translating it to simpler English. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

https://marnanel.github.io/simple-afaq/a1.html

What is anarchism?

There are three big problems in society:

social breakdown, such as poverty, hunger, homelessness, crime.

war, and its weapons.

the destruction of our natural environment.

My partner taught me something about hope, accidentally, when we were trying to get to a show.

I said, "There's no point rushing. We have no hope of getting there on time."

He said, "The point of hoping is acknowledging that something good is possible in the future. Then that's information you can use to make it more likely."

The connection to politics is left as an exercise for the reader 😊

Idk how many nails you'd need before it counted as evidence :)

Eye contact, meme, silly, the HYPNOQUEEN

I had a conversation once that went

me: but how will you keep continuity with the NHS

him: that's not important

me: but for disabled people it's a matter of life and death

him: look, this is a revolution, everyone suffers in a revolution. it's a question of what you're willing to sacrifice

me: and you're happy to build this over our graves, then?

me: you're no better than the fascists, really, are you?

him: [no answer]

I've been reading about how the Black Panthers set up medical clinics. We need to do something like that, more or less, sooner or later: the NHS as it stands depends on the state, and we can't just do without the NHS (or we're effectively saying that disabled people are disposable).

How that can happen, I don't know. But the BPP managed it, and if it can be done once it can be done again.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/institutions-african-american-history/black-panther-partys-free-medical-clinics-1969-1975/

first: BASIC (BBC BASIC, GWBASIC)
second: Turbo Pascal
third: dBase
fourth: Miranda
fifth: Ada
sixth: C
seventh: C++
eighth: Java
later: Perl, Javascript
now: Python

Maybe I'm old

I wasn't coping very well at the time— hence the poem— and when some people didn't like it at a workshop I decided it wasn't up to much and put it away. Looking at it again, I think they missed a few things.

Someone in the workshop called said that this was Kipling-lite, or similar, and it was Victorian advice unsuited for a world which has experienced Nazism. The daft thing is, I'd written this based on Viktor Frankl's account of his time in Auschwitz. I didn't tell them that, though.

3/3

Oblivion may call you— as it must do, by and by,
But contradict the darkness with the truth:
You thought the world won't miss you, but remember that's a lie:
Your loss would linger like a missing tooth.

If you ever wait and wonder why you're living on the earth
If you're thinking that you might as well be dead:
The fact the world in future will be better for your birth
Is hope along the weary road ahead.

2/2

A thing I wrote a while ago but put away. (See below.)

If you ever wait and wonder why you're living on the earth
And you're thinking that you might as well be dead;
If the darkness ever whispers that your life is lacking worth
And your place should pass to someone else instead:

There waits a task that no-one else is competent to do.
And without your hand it never could be done.
There lives a mind that keeps a place particular for you,
That can't be filled by any other one.

1/3

I dreamed I was back at primary school, and Jeremy Corbyn came to visit. But he was cosplaying a comic-book superhero called Psionic. (This was the OED word of the day yesterday, so my mind evidently appropriated it from there.)

It then turned out that the comics artist had originally designed Psionic to look like Jeremy Corbyn, so he'd figured it would be an easy cosplay. I'd never noticed before, but once you got past the green skin and yellow hair, it was obvious.

Seen on Twitter #lizziesinthebox