Johann Lau

@johannlau

"To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment." George Orwell, Proposed Preface to "Animal Farm"

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YouTube Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y johannlau.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 14

You compare human beings to cancer, having fuck all of a point, I point that out via simple questions that should have occurred to you before you even made that shitty analogy, the Socratic method if you will, and now that you've got nothing and are too fucking spineless to own it, you put it on me.

fucking idiot who fell of a bike because they but a bat through the spokes of the front wheel

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 12

> When we are told that we should measure a prophet by how their claimed foresight pans out, is not this a very "scientific" view We don't let things "pan out". When American Evangelicals talk about "triggering" the return of Jesus and Armageddon, that's a threat and a plan, not a belief.

> [The method of infallible prediction] is foolproof only after the movements have seized power. Then all debate about the truth or falsity of a totalitarian dictator’s prediction is as weird as arguing with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive – since by killing the person in question the murderer can promptly provide proof of the correctness of his statement. The only valid argument under such conditions is promptly to rescue the person whose death is predicted. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy all the others. In other words, the method of infallible prediction, more than any other totalitarian propaganda device, betrays its ultimate goal of world conquest, since only in a world completely under his control could the totalitarian ruler possibly realize all his lies and make true all his prophecies.

-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 12

You think science ISN'T a human construct? You think you understood more than people like Heisenberg? That would be amazing, if it wasn't so common. You are, in the words of C.S. Lewis, yet another "little unscientific follower of science".

The modern astrophysical world view, which began with Galileo, and its challenge to the adequacy of the senses to reveal reality, have left us a universe of whose qualities we know no more than the way they affect our measuring instruments, and — in the words of Eddington — "the former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber." Instead of objective qualities, in other words, we find instruments, and instead of nature or the universe — in the words of Heisenberg — man encounters only himself.

[The German physicist Werner Heisenberg has expressed this thought in a number of recent publications. For instance: "Wenn man versucht, von der Situation in der modernen Naturwissenschaft ausgehend, sich zu den in Bewegung geratenen Fundamenten vorzutasten, so hat man den Eindruck, ... dass zum erstenmal im Laufe der Geschichte der Mensch auf dieser Erde nur noch sich selbst gegenübersteht ... , daß wir gewissermassen immer nur uns selbst begegnen" (Das Naturbild der heutigen Physik [1955], pp. 17-18). Heisenberg's point is that the observed object has no existence independent of the observing subject: "Durch die Art der Beobachtung wird entschieden, welche Züge der Natur bestimmt werden und welche wir durch unsere Beobachtungen verwischen" (Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft [1949], p. 67).]

-- Hannah Arendt, "Vita Activa"

> It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.

-- C.S. Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 12

is this the "Blue MAGA" I keep hearing about?

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 11

as Hannah Arendt pointed out, without ever managing to apply it to monotheism, where I think it originated:

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 9

"urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 7

> I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.

-- Vasily Grossman, "Life and Fate"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 7

"look at the genocide you made me do"

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less
radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

Apr 07, 2026, 2:06 PM

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 3

yep! it's from "The Wall", an absolutely incredible movie

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 2

Adults' Media Lives report 2026 www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r...

"I’d still go to YouTube because it's the place you can get the most volume
of information from different sources that I understand. And then you
can say to yourself, well, there's more people saying this than saying
that, so surely there must be something in it."

-- Elizabeth, 64

Some place a high degree of trust on viewer comments as a means of “regulating” factual content on YouTube (and some social platforms).

"If you see something on social media, whether you believe it or not, you
can go to the comments and see everyone's points… If most people agree
with it, you know you should be at least somewhat agreeing with it."

-- Hazeem, 21

There is also confusion about the extent to which content on YouTube is regulated by the platform owner.

"I know that YouTube has things in place where you’ll just get struck off
if you’re doing or saying something that's not right."

-- Elizabeth, 64

Johann Lau@johannlau· Apr 2

"Pulsing hot liquid flows through my outstretched tendrils, sending thrills into my interior The moment has come. I swell and burst. Above me a cloud of whispering life whirls through the air. I am content."

We are part of Juffo-Wup.

Juffo-Wup is the hot light in the darkness.

All else is unfulfilled Void.

The source of Juffo-Wup is at 629.1, 220.8.

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 30

test, 1 2

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 30

relevanter denn je

Vernunft erfordert Bezogenheit und Selbst-Gefühl. Wenn ich nur passiver Empfänger von Eindrücken, Gedanken und Meinungen bin, dann kann ich diese zwar miteinander vergleichen und sie manipulieren, aber ich kann sie nicht durschauen. Descartes leitete die Tatsache, daß ich bin, davon ab, daß ich denke. "Ich zweifle", so argumentierte er, "also denke ich; ich denke, also bin ich." Aber auch das Umgekehrte gilt. Nur wenn ich bin, wenn ich meine Individualität nicht an das Man verloren habe, kann ich denken, das heißt, dann kann ich meine Vernunft gebrauchen.

In engem Zusammenhang hiermit steht der Mangel an Wirklichkeitssinn, der für die entfremdete Persönlichkeit kennzeichnend ist. Wenn man von einem "Mangel an Wirklichkeitssinn" beim heutigen Menschen spricht, so steht das im Widerspruch zu der weitverbreiteten Idee, daß wir uns durch unseren größeren Realismus von den meisten geschichtlichen Epochen unterscheiden. Aber von unserem Realismus zu reden, kommt beinahe einer paranoide Einstellung gleich. Was sind das für Realisten, die mit Waffen spielen, welche zur Vernichtung der gesamten modernen Zivilisation, wenn nicht gar unserer Erde, führen können! [..] ganz abgesehen davon ist unverkennbar, daß der heutige Mensch einen erstaunlichen Mangel an Realismus in bezug auf alle Gebiete, auf die es ankommt, aufweist; in bezug auf die Bedeutung von Leben und Tod, in bezug auf Glück und Leiden, auf Gefühle und ernsthaftes Denken. Er hat die gesamte Wirklichkeit der menschlichen Existenz zugedeckt und durch ein künstliches, verniedlichtes Bild einer Pseudowirklichkeit ersetzt - so ähnlich wie die Eingeborenen ihr Land und ihre Freiheit für glitzernde Glasperlen hergegeben haben. Er hat sich tatsächlich so weit von der menschlichen Wirklichkeit entfernt, daß er mit den Bewohnern von Brave New World sagen kann: "Wenn der einzelne fühlt, gerät die Gemeinschaft ins Wanken."

-- Erich Fromm, "Wege aus einer kranken Gesellschaft" (1960)

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 24

Nice! I happen to be a space station designer and made this original design for you, all by myself. It is the best design, so naturally you have no choice. In exchange I require 30% of all revenue generated in space, thanks for your cooperation (or else).

the Talos space station from the video game Prey (the one from 2017 which is one of the best games ever made, you should play it, sighted or not it should be a treat either way)

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 24

meh, Bluesky doesn't allow posting threads longer than 10 skeedizzles at once. laaaaame.

The following extract shows how a messaging client's text entry could be arbitrarily restricted to a fixed number of characters, thus forcing any conversation through this medium to be terse and discouraging intelligent discourse.

<label>What are you doing? <input name=status maxlength=140></label>

-- Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#attr-input-maxlength

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 24

Yeah, come to think of it: if you don't have honesty, you don't even have yourself, so you *need* an "identity". Then people who don't share in that, become a threat. The rest is commentary. Several ideologies aim to extinguish humans. all saying "but our ENEMIES want that (too), so we're good!"

> Since no one is capable of forming his own opinion without the benefit of a multitude of opinions held by others, the rule of public opinion endangers even the opinion of those few who may have the strength not to share it. This is one of the reasons for the curiously sterile negativism of all opinions which oppose a popularly acclaimed tyranny. [...] public opinion, by virtue of its unanimity, provokes a unanimous opposition and thus kills true opinions everywhere.

-- Hannah Arendt

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 23

nothing says "grass roots effort by real human beings" like this shit

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 13

ich muss so oft an dieses Gedicht denken

They smell your breath lest you have said: I love you.
They smell your heart;
These are strange times, my dear.
They flog love
at the roadblock.
Let's hide love in the larder.

In this crooked blind alley, as the chill descends
they feed fires
with logs of song and poetry
Hazard not a thought:
These are strange times, my dear.

The man who knocks at your door in the noon of the night
has come to kill the light.
Let's hide light in the larder.

There, butchers are posted in passageways
with bloody chopping blocks and cleavers:
These are strange times, my dear.

They chop smiles off lips,
and songs off the mouth:
Let's hide joy in the larder.

-- Ahmad Shamlu, "In This Blind Alley"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 12

lel

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

this was the absolute bomb shizzle

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

something tells me Firefox doesn't support this haha

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

Oh, and with that quote in mind: I will never ever fucking understand how the Trillian of the BBC TV series came to be. You can imagine that character a million ways, except this one. Come on. With that squeaky voice. Compare to the BBC radio version where she's awesome.. I don't get it.

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

Mine is this quote, because it's my favorite bit in the books, always. That and Fenchurch stuff. Also, Israel could be Krikkit; if they had the capability to stop and think, much less to doubt, and if being alone was their desire, not to rule over others and just regress into lazy, Vogon blobs.

Trillian led him for a short walk through the light before she said anything more. He stumbled uncertainly after her. The encircling flashlight beams were drooping slightly now as if they were abdicating to this strange, quiet girl who alone in this Universe of dark confusion seemed to know what she was doing.

She turned and faced him, and lightly held both his arms. He was a picture of bewildered misery.

"Tell me," she said.

He said nothing for a moment, while his gaze darted from one of her eyes to the other.

"We ..." he said, "we have to be alone ... I think." He screwed up his face and then dropped his head forward, shaking it like someone trying to shake a coin out of a money box. He looked up again. "We have this bomb now, you see," he said, "it's just a little one."

"I know," she said.

[..]

"But they say," his voice trailed on, "they say it can destroy everything that exists. And we have to do that, you see, I think. Will that make us alone? I don't know. It seems to be our function, though," he said, and dropped his head again.

"Whatever that means," said a hollow voice from the crowd.

[..]

"It's all right," she said quietly, but clearly enough for all the shadowy crowd to hear, "you don't have to do it."

She rocked him.

"You don't have to do it," she said again.

She let him go and stood back.

"I want you to do something for me," she said, and unexpectedly laughed.

"I want," she said, and laughed again. She put her hand over her mouth and then said, with a straight face, "I want you to take me to your leader," and she pointed into the War Zones in the sky. She seemed somehow to know that their leader would be there.

Her laughter seemed to discharge something in the atmosphere. From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune that would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.
Douglas Adams
"Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

so the exact opposite of this man

Salvatore Ganacci riding his giant shoe to bring freedom to abused animals and justice to their abusers

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

"If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done."

-- Vincent van Gogh

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 11

just in case, becasuse it's never "you know, your're right, and I'm sorry for still beating this dead idiot horse", it's always more along the lines of a block ^^

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 10

El Príncipe on La Gomera doing the same :)

orange cat with a little scar on the nose snoozing in the afternoon sun (not that you see it's the afternoon sun in the image, but I was there and I'm telling you, that was what went down)

same cat, different time and position, same basic situation :)

third one, you know the drill, except this time he's dozing stretched out to full length against a stair

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 10

here's a few lizards from La Gomera :)

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 10

Awwww!! I am so very happy to hear that. And you know, I actually thought and said this myself often: of one thousand things I see online, or in real life, that "do something for me", even a whole lot, I give feedback on one of them. But everything matters.

He would have liked to continue talking about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account [...] And yet to the people of only two generations ago this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious effort.
George Orwell
"Nineteen-Eightyfour"

Johann Lau@johannlau· Mar 10

People say what they say, not what others bend over backwards to read into it.