Julie

“Like the fascist/New Age alliance, all of this is playing out on a kind of historical loop. Whenever one group has chosen to allow terrible violence to be inflicted on another group, there have been stories and logics that provided the permission for the beneficiaries of the violence either to actively (even gleefully) participate or to actively look away. Stories that said things like this: The people being sacrificed/enslaved/imprisoned/colonized/left to die so that others can live comfortably are not the same level of human. They are other/substandard/lesser/darker/more animal/diseased/criminal/lazy/uncivilized. These logics have been resurgent on the right for years now, evident in the presence of protofascist and authoritarian leaders in Brazil, India, Hungary, the Philippines, Russia, and Turkey, among others.”
― Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World

“The same term, "brown lands," is sometimes used to describe those parts of the modern urban landscape that have fallen to ruin, at least in the eyes of the planners who measure the city's health based on its contribution to the wealth and growth of the human community. Empty lots, abandoned buildings, trash woods—all the parcels whose former use for industry, residence, agriculture, or other productive purposes has been abandoned, often due to changing economic or technological conditions, and have not yet been replaced by or redeveloped for some more lucrative and vibrant contemporary use. They're zones of economic entropy that become almost invisible due to their removal from the dynamic commercial flows of metropolitan life. Since the postindustrial cleanup era began in the 1970s, the more common official term used to describe such zones is "brownfields," but that has a more specific meaning, describing areas polluted with environmental toxins. Brown lands are more inclusive, encompassing all the properties where human occupation has effectively ceased for many different reasons.”
― Christopher Brown, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places

“The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies…. You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.”
― Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time