Mx Arjuna

A still from Dune (1984) showing Paul Atreides in his room on Arrakis, wearing khaki green military sleeves, using a handheld scanner to check an open metal case containing rows of bright orange spice samples in individual sections. The scene takes place on a dark wooden table with rich upholstery and ornate details visible around, emphasizing the scientific examination of the precious melange.

Dune (1984)

"Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

— Dune, Frank Herbert

A still from the 1984 film Dune showing Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides in House Atreides military uniform. He holds a knife in his raised right hand while extending his left hand forward. The costume features distinctive circular mesh panels exposing his chest/nipple area, set against metallic armor plating. His expression is intense and heroic despite the uniform design choices.

Dune (1984) costume designers thought seriously about how House Atreides, from their ancestral holding of ocean-world Caladan, might design a uniform for their fief of desert planet Arrakis and came up with nipple vents.

"Earthseed deals with ongoing reality, not with supernatural authority figures. Worship is no good without action. With action, it’s only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind."

— Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler

I Responded to One of the Spam Texts From a “Recruiter”—Then Took the Job. It Got Weirder Than I Could Have Imagined. The story of “Cathy,” my scammer.

Task Scams "have soared ... In 2023 there were 5,000 reports of task scams filed with the FTC; in the first six months of 2024, there were 20,000, with reported losses topping $220 million..."
slate.com/technology/2...

Authorities have also exerted more control over the internet in Russia by taking over its architecture. They have consolidated more than half of the Russian IP addresses in the hands of seven state-tied internet service providers and decreased the overall number of providers. The government also created a national domain name system, which works as the internet address book, and government transport layer security certificates, which verify that the website belongs to a trusted entity and that the service is encrypted.

The TSPU equipment ("technological means for countering threats” ТСПУ) also "allows the government to carry out 'internet isolation' drills and regional shutdowns under the pretext of protecting public security."

"Increasing online censorship is carried out via ...equipment installed in virtually all networks of the country’s internet service providers under requirements laid out in the so-called sovereign internet law ... which aim to create a separate Russian section of the internet."

"Russian law requires websites that place ads to dedicate 5 percent to 'social advertisements,'" ... Yandex displayed one "urging people to join the Russian armed forces, apparently to fight in the war against Ukraine, more than two billion times in the past two years."

"Active state-sponsored promotion of Russian alternatives" forces "a growing number of users to switch to Russian browsers and social media platforms on which users are offered government-promoted content and interpretations of current and historic events."

"Accessing blocked websites and apps, like Instagram or Facebook, is largely impossible in Russia without a VPN ... about half of the country’s population does not know how to use such tools, and the authorities increasingly block them."

Russia: Internet Blocking, Disruptions and Increasing Isolation Russian authorities have doubled down on censorship online, internet disruptions, and surveillance since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Human Rights Watch said ...

"Russian authorities have blocked thousands of websites, including for independent media outlets and human rights organizations, opposition politicians’ web pages, and social media platforms..."
www.hrw.org/news/2025/07...

To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.

— Octavia E. Butler

To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.

— Octavia E. Butler

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.

— Octavia E. Butler

Screenshot from the book Parable of the Talents: "Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery."

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
— Parable of the Talents, Octavia E. Butler

Across China, similar warnings are spreading as the authorities tighten control over state employees’ contacts with foreigners. Some kindergarten teachers, doctors and even government contractors and employees of state-owned enterprises have been ordered to hand in their passports. Some cities make retirees wait two years to reclaim their passports. In many cities, travel overseas by public employees, even for personal reasons, requires approval. Business trips abroad for “ordinary research, exchange and study” have been banned. And in most provinces, those who have studied abroad are now disqualified from certain public positions.

"No Passports, No Study Abroad: China Limits Public Employees’ Travel: Even low-level government employees like elementary school teachers and nurses have been ordered to hand in their passports, to enforce 'discipline.'"
archive.is/202508030408...

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/w...

Save NASA Science - Action Hub NASA science faces record cuts. Take action to stop it—we'll show you how.

The NASA budget cuts impact science most of all. Earth science, planetary science, astrophysics and more. Over half of the cuts are focused on slashing funding for science, an overall cut of 47% from the science funding.
www.planetary.org/save-nasa-sc...

US Valentine’s Day spending 2025: $27.5 billion
NASA budget for fiscal year 2025: $25.4 billion

The gap will get even bigger in 2026 since the NASA budget was cut down to $18.8 billion, the smallest since 1961.

The NASA budget is really small. Americans spend more money on Valentine's Day each year than on NASA. Space science is also climate science and it's a good investment. What isn't good is privatizing it, paying billionaires to build space fascism, and militarization of space.

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators ... Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data."

— Neuromancer, William Gibson

Jacking in to the Ono-Sendai, you find a Muslim Pan-Africanist wearing North Korean colours who dumps you intel on OnlyFans bankrolling AIPAC... data he pulled from some Orthodox Monarchist Entrepreneur running Mario Brothers ICE. The matrix doesn't lie.

The real reason the West is warmongering against China China’s spectacular economic development has brought up the price of its labour and dwindled Western corporate profits.

"If Apple had to pay Chinese and East Asian workers at the same rate as a US worker, this would have cost them an additional $572 per iPad in 2011."
www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

Intercepted Podcast: Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Abolition Guest host Chenjerai Kumanyika speaks with abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore in a special two-part episode.

"What we’re talking about is divest from police, prisons, courts, and so forth and put those money and human resources into schools, social work, a Green New Deal or Red Green New Deal, economic activity — things that communities, municipalities, states can do."
theintercept.com/2020/06/10/r...

"No abolitionist who is a true abolitionist wants to save money. What we want is for the money to be spent, to enhance, and support human life so that it can flourish in a way that doesn’t destroy the planet. We’re not about cost-savings."

— Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”

Jarret, a Trump-like president in Octavia E. Butler's 1998 Parable of the Talents: "He wants to take us all back to some magical time ... There was never such a time in this country ... he has a simple answer: 'Join us! ... become one of us. Help us to make America great again'."

“I HAVE READ THAT the period of upheaval that journalists have begun to refer to as “the Apocalypse” or more commonly, more bitterly, “the Pox” lasted from 2015 through 2030—a decade and a half of chaos. This is untrue. The Pox has been a much longer torment. It began well before 2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended. I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people. “Overall, the Pox has had the effect of an installment-plan World War III. In fact, there were several small, bloody shooting wars going on around the world during the Pox. These were stupid affairs—wastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war. Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself. What is left of it now, what it has become, I do not know."

"It began well before 2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended ... We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises."

— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents (1998)

"Right now the Earth and everyone on Earth is in real danger. When we perpetrate violence toward our own and other species, we’re being violent toward ourselves at the same time. When we know how to protect all beings, we will be protecting ourselves."

— Thich Nhat Hanh

"If you want to be free from suffering, you should contemplate knowing how much is enough. By knowing it, you are in the place of enjoyment and peacefulness."

— The Buddha, as told by Zen Master Dōgen

"The bulk of industrially produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize ... livestock and automobiles over hungry people."

We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People... and Still Can't End Hunger | Common Dreams A new a study* from McGill University and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature compared organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. Researchers found th...

2012: "Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity ... the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1.5 times enough food to feed everyone ..."
www.commondreams.org/views/2012/0...