Blink of an eye

Another possibility is the “Dyson net”, a web of cables strung about the star which could have power or heat collection units strung between the cables. The Dyson net reduces to a special case of Dyson shell or bubble, however, depending on how the cables are supported against the sun’s gravity.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_net#Other_types

You know what everyone’s greatest fear is? It is that all the dreams we have, all the crazy ideas and aspirations, all the impossible romantic longings and utopian visions can come true, that the world can grant our wishes. People spend their lives doing everything in their power to fend off that possibility: they beat themselves up with every kind of insecurity, sabotage their own efforts, undermine love affairs and cry sour grapes before the world even has a chance to defeat them… because no weight could be heavier to bear than the possibility that everything we want is possible. If that is true, then there really are things at stake in this life, things to be truly won or lost. Nothing could be more heartbreaking than to fail when such success is actually possible, so we do everything we can to avoid trying in the first place, to avoid having to try.

For if there is even the slightest possibility that our hearts’ desires could be realized, then of course the only thing that makes sense is to throw ourselves entirely into their pursuit and risk that heartbreak. Despair and nihilism seem safer, projecting our hopelessness onto the cosmos as an excuse for not even trying. So we remain, clutching our resignation, as secure as corpses in coffins (“better safe and sorry”)… but this still cannot ward off that dreadful possibility. Thus in our hopeless flight from the real tragedy of the world, we only heap upon ourselves false tragedy, unnecessary tragedy, as well.

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 And so, despite the stereotyped images used in the media to sell toothpaste and honeymoon suites, genuine passionate love is discouraged in our culture. Being “carried away by your emotions” is frowned upon; instead we are raised to always be on our guard lest our hearts lead us astray.

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Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

I wished I’d have hugged you more.

I would like you to
firmly resist your weakness
like a chrysalis holding back a butterfly, a maple leaf resisting the autumn
a newly splashed
droplet resisting breakup

I would like you to
balance your inner beauty
like the structure of a snowflake, the four petals of a finger tree flower
a quatrain on a yellowed paper scroll:
“a still night, an empty spring mountain”

I would like you to tolerate the secrets of a narcissus
forgive the twists of a moonlit river
look straight at the murky sky as rain falls down
just like listening to a naked prayer
like the ocean
embracing the absolution of a storm

Then, maybe you would be willing
to walk through a declining border town
through a prosperous city center
see life, see death
see all the bustle and transience
dignity and cold lifelessness

Sometimes, life is
as quietly beautiful as a poem, as desolate as a vine
as intense as a soaring eagle
as lonely as a dust-covered stele

And so time passes, places alter, faces change
it has been a long journey
we return to the room we set off from
origin and destination curl into a perfect ring

I shall recognize the look in your eyes after calibration:
clear, unswerving
like steel beads that do not rust roundly, in a dark room
reflecting pure light

Chen, Yi-Wen

We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society. Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge,we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those that have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticezed gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way - we must return to the beasts. It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us to do so. If we dream of a return to our childhood, if we are tempted to rely on others an so be happy, if we shrink from the task of carrying our cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we loose courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify ourselves with a clear understanding of the decision before us. We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason me may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.

Karl Popper

Remember that giant uproar on the internet about a really stupid law a while ago? Remember how glad and proud we all were when it could be stopped? Now guess what. CISPA is back!

So it looks like some politicians’ opinion is that we will get sick of defending our freedoms. Let us work together again and prove them wrong!

It’s easy. Just click here and please inform your friends about it, cause nobody likes to be constantly crept upon.

P.S.: Sorry for all the politics, but seriously CISPA really sucks.

tl;dr If you reblog this, you will help internet users in countries with opressive governments. It’s all done by this badge.

You all like the internet, right? You also find it bad, how authoritarian and oppressive governments like in China, Iran, Syria and other countries are censoring the web, right?

If it was something as simple as a reblog, would you do something that really helps these people to get past their censorship and allows them to reach the open web as we know it?

This post has a little badge attached to it. It was developed (among others) by a student of the Stanford University. What it does is creating a so called Tor bridge allowing users of a certain censorship circumvention tool, like reporters and other people use to get past their censoring firewalls. It works using a modern web technology called WebSockets.

You can read more about it here, but you actually don’t need to do that. Like I said, all that’s need is reblogging this post and you are doing everything necessary, by causing people visiting your blog to help out.

If you wanna do a bit more you can change the settings of the badge by clicking on it. You can set them in a way that helps censored people every time you visit a page with this badge on it.

Last, but not least you can help even more by installing this extension. If you happen to use Firefox this add-on is for you. All it does is adding a cute cupcake and you will be helping censored people every time your browser is open.

I hope this makes it easy enough for you to help.

P.S: If the button is light blue (instead of dark blue) you are helping right now! :)