A quotation from Ingersoll

It was also believed [in barbarous times] that certain things must be accepted as true, no matter whether they were reasonable or not; that it was pleasing to God to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the creed of the majority.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1881-05-01) “The Great Infidels,” Booth’s Theater, New York

More about this quote: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #ingersoll #robertingersoll #robertgreeningersoll #belief #beliefsystem #creed #culture #dogma #majority #reasonability #society #tradition #truth #tyrannyofthemajority #unreasonability

Every street looks the same and every hit song is interchangeable with the next. Lauren Leek writes for her newsletter about how algorithms are flattening everything into sameness, and how they could be regulated.

https://flip.it/Ky1VGJ

#Culture #Algorithms #Technology

The Enlightenment has driven the West down a dead-end alley, but they haven't quite yet sussed this out.
https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/post-survival-same-road?r=pvxh5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
#enlightenment #psychology #philosophy #history #society #artificialintelligence #economics #ecomomy #scarcity #society #culture #humanity #technology #automation #healthcare #survival

This has been bugging me for a while, because Dad used to say dinner, and I was confused when he meant lunch, and he'd say supper for dinner. Max Miller just brought it up talking about K-Rations so let's resolve this. Please comment on any regional or cultural/etymological details you know of pls! It may just come down to the fact there used to be four meals for farm workers causing all this confusion... breakfast, lunch, dinner, and finally supper. (?) #Culture #Etymology #Language

#AI + Cultural Appropriation #Quote

"I'm speaking out a lot every day now on the topic of #AI and the Cultural Appropriation that #generative AI brings."

- @jaredwhite on #Fediverse #JaredWhite #HumanWebCollective

- Video page: https://humansare.social/c/downthelane/p/2127/art-decos-revenge-the-rise-and-fall-of-millennials-and-their-gray

#CulturalAppropriation #Phrase #Colonialism #Colonial #Human #Culture #Collective

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Quote by Jared: I'm speaking out a lot every day now on the topic of #AI and the Cultural Appropriation that #generative AI brings."

National Indigenous Music awards 2026: Baker Boy wins big, including album and song of the year

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/aug/09/nimas-2026-winners-national-indigenous-music-awards-baker-boy-djandjay

#Indigenous #Aboriginal #rap #hiphop #music #culture #BakerBoy

#Introduction

I jut moved from toot.community over here. I'm more of a booster than content creator. I enjoy #art, #FountainPens, #bicycles, #satire, #TheOutdoors, riffing on the Orange Cheeto, #science, #cats, #culture at large, and the world in general.

I believe we're here for more than pulling down a paycheck. Our lives need to give back in some way to future generations and those currently around us. How to do that is a discovery I'm currently on.

Oh, damn. I have more than a 500 character limit on this instance. This could be bad news for my tendency to ramble and be too wordy.

I hearby promise to keep my thoughts to a respectable length, like the {CHAUCER} CANTERBURY TALES.

(Edit corrected the title.)

The Pathology of Happiness: Job, Finland, and the Invention of the Good Life

My latest #Substack.

👉 https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/the-pathology-of-happiness?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

I look at the pursuit of happiness relative to other aspirations by looking at the Biblical Job, Buddhism, and Finland. Don't worry. Be happy.🧐

#philosophy #happiness #ethics #buddhism #religion #goals #attachment #metrics #experience #blog #video #podcast #culture #welbeing #psychology #critcaltheory

1967’s ‘Summer of Love’; or was it the summer of hate?

By Elizabeth Prata

City Lights Books in San Francisco was the epicenter for the Beat Generation of the 1950s and helped spark the cultural earthquake that was the hippie movement of the ’60s. EPrata photo

It happened 59 years ago. It was summer, flower children ‘hippies’ were on the rise, the Viet Nam war had become full blown, and an entire subculture was born. It was dubbed the “Summer of Love”.

The generation born Post-WWII in the late 1940s and 1950s and their parents experienced economic prosperity, technological advances, and a feeling of hopefulness since the dark World War was ended.

As with any culture, the hopefulness evaporated as the Cold War entered. The cultural highs went to lows. Nuclear fears, Russia fears, and general feelings of concern with what rapid consumerism and technology was doing to the country sparked the now teenage and young adult Baby Boomer generation to “question authority” and reject the old way of living.

Then the Viet Nam war happened, and with it, the fairly new technology called television, showing its satellite images from jungles of death halfway around the world now added to the generation’s discontent. The newsman Walter Cronkite intoning at the end of every nightly newscast the number of dead and injured in the war added to the prevailing mood of uneasiness.

Cronkite, America’s ‘most trustworthy voice’ declared the war a stalemate in early 1968. In those days news broadcasters did not utter opinions due to the federal law Fairness Doctrine. His pronouncement of the war a stalemate crashed into public consciousness & altered the course of it.

The rejection of the way things were into a way the hippies wanted things to be, came together to ignite The Summer of Love.

The hippies were also called Flower Children. They advocated for peace and love, art and poetry, spiritual transcendence- usually drug induced- and community.

Sounds good, right?

Remember, anything obtained outside of God is vanity, empty, and vain.

The Summer of Love was an event where over 100,000 hippies converged on Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. These were kids seeking a new way of life, some were drifting runaways, and others just came for the drugs. But they came, did they ever. They wanted to re-structure civilization through peace and love. “To find a new way for humanity” as the gentleman says below. Could they even “restructure society”? For a while, yes, they did. We still feel the effects of that summer today, nearly 60 years later.

Screen shot from PBS’ The American Experience: The Summer of Love

Part of that new way for humanity was the hippies were taught to “question authority” and “turn on, tune in, drop out” by LSD drenched counterculture-man Timothy Leary. Leary was-

“One of the most influential icons in the counterculture movement which formed in the late 1960s out of opposition to the Vietnam War’s escalation, Leary gained influence among much of the youth by advocating the use of LSD as a way of mind expansion and the revelation of personal truth.” (Source).

The truth of it is, the entire movement was demonic. The youth did drop out, of society, of college, from families. They wandered, spiritually and physically, into new realms. Realms of depravity such as experimenting with homosexuality and lesbianism. Realms of mind-altering drugs. Realms of different living situations such as polygamy or ‘free love’ communes.

It’s easy to write off the hippie movement as essentially unserious. Most of them were young; few of them were sober; they said things like “groovy” and “far out.” And in part, the hippies were animated by psychic impulses that weren’t new: the youthful rejection of the apparent mundanity of adulthood, and good old hedonism.

But lurking beneath the shallow motifs – flowers in the hair, acid [LSD] on the tongue – was a serious philosophical protest. “At the deepest level,” writes W. J. Rorabaugh, in one of the few good histories of the movement, the hippies expressed “a crisis of belief.”

Source above, essay “The Terrible Optimism of the Hippies” published in The Independent (UK) 2019.

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes teaches us something about the pointless search for meaning and a satisfying lifestyle that are apart from God.

Further, in W. J. Rorabaugh’s retrospective book, American Hippies (Cambridge Essential Histories) we read of the,

“massive upheavals of the 1960s, which included civil rights, Black Power, feminism, and gay liberation, as well as looser sexual mores, the end of censorship, street protests, political radicalism, and environmentalism. Collectively, these movements profoundly changed the United States. Second, the hippie counterculture was large. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans were, at least for a time, hippies, and millions adopted some if not all hippie beliefs and practices. The numbers mattered. Third, hippie values represented a generational break with traditional middle-class culture. When hordes of people concentrated in a single youth generation simultaneously adopted new thoughts and behaviors, mainstream culture was forced to pay attention. In the long run, hippies played a significant role in transforming American society.”

A LOT was going on in the 1960s! That ‘Summer of Love’ was a startling and visible opening to this upheaval. A crisis of belief. A yearning for something missing from American life. A seeking of a new way.

Don’t all of those reflect back to Ecclesiastes? King Solomon wrote of the yearning of the human heart and its vain seeking, apart from God. God defines love. Disaffected youths do not define love.

Swami Satchidananda giving the opening talk at the Woodstock Festival of 1969. By Mark Goff – my own collection, Public Domain

What is love? The hippies thought they had unlocked the secret to spiritual fulfillment. They believed, with the help of LSD and mushrooms, that they could access the transcendent divine, and become one with the universe, in love. Many turned to Eastern religions and their music sounded forth with flutes and zithers.

However, God defined love through His word. His is the only and the final word on the subject. The hippies, mainly middle-class white Americans, really did have it good. Two parent households with a mom and a dad, two car homes with garage, creature comforts, church-going, sexual normalcy, and clean living. Rejecting all that for a mystical union with a drug induced divine was for a time, unrestrained disorder nationwide.

What IS love?

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; … But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a, 13).

God is love, and those who love Him know love, for God IS love.

The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him. (John 14:21).

There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:18).

I can’t overstate the rapidity with which the hippies’ concepts and philosophies changed America for the worse. Sadly, many of the hippies descended into homelessness and drug addiction. Others came up with sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Others discovered that free love meant their loved one moved on to the next partner without a thought, leaving broken hearts and disillusionment in their wake. Free love, apparently, wasn’t free.

When humans define love it always misses the mark. As is natural with the natural man, the hippie culture descended quickly to depravity and a worship of self. Self-evolution, the divine within, freedom of self-expression, and a self-involved love were at the core, and thus, destined to fail.

The hippies’ counter-culture movement was historically a new approach. Not blind ambition of the Caesar era. Not Machiavellian scheming of the feudal lords. Not evil malevolence of the dictator times. This time, satan tried a gentle naivete that rushed the love culture into the American summer. For a while, it worked.

The Flower Power photograph by Bernie Boston, taken during the March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967.
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37905458

The Preacher said in Ecclesiastes 12:1a, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth,“… and Ecclesiastes 12:13-14,

Only God can change a culture for the good. Let’s conclude with the Preacher’s conclusion-

The conclusion, when everything has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.

How art invented humanity

When early humans first painted cave walls, they began to find out who they really were: our minds emerged from our images

by J F Martel

https://aeon.co/essays/humans-did-not-invent-art-it-was-the-other-way-around?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b7b86a5cff-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_07_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

#art #culture #anthropology

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Photograph of Ellen Harding Baker's “solar system” quilt, 1876–ca. 1883. An embroidered astronomical quilt on black fabric showing the sun at the center with concentric orbital rings representing the planets (including Saturn with its rings), a comet, and a starry background.

people who complained about #MidsomerMurders lack of diversity didn't get that it’s a show about dispelling the myth of white supremacist solidarity.

so much of the white-on-white violence is by nepobaby manchildren pissed they can’t keep riding on their families’ names & fortunes.

the show is not only a master class on the consequences of late-stage #capitalism. it’s brilliant at showing the decline of English hegemony & the villainy of British class #warfare.

#tv #britpop #culture

In our latest "postcard," reporter Jason Buch explores the natural beauty ... and pervasive surveillance ... of the Texas #border region on a unique two-wheeled journey. https://www.texasobserver.org/postcard-laredo-border-wall/

#Texas #cycling #culture #photography #SouthTexas

"We are all living inside the world that QVC made, the commingling of identity and acquisition."

A decades-old shopping channel, a lifelong friendship, and the strange comfort of watching people sell things you'll never buy. New from Hannah Engler Harvey: https://longreads.com/2026/07/30/qvc-shopping-influencers-friendship/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Longreads #Culture #CulturalCriticism #Shopping #QVC #Influencers

Seven Brilliant Black Inventors You Never Learned About In History Class

By Natasha Ishak

From George Washington Carver to Madam C.J. Walker to Lonnie Johnson, meet some of the most iconic African American inventors who shaped history.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/black-inventors

#culture #history #black_inventors

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Alice Augusta Ball in 1915. She is wearing academic graduation attire including a mortarboard cap and gown.

This is the magnificent library Anthropic amassed, before destroying it because it gave them a legal copyright loophole.

#Anthropic #AI #Books #Culture #Tech #LLMs #Civilization

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Photo of a huge warehouse with rows and rows of tables covered in thousands of boxes of books.

Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.

AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.

The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.

Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.

#AI #Books #Culture #Civilization #Tech #LLMs

Santorini had been on my photography bucket list for years. Even though I wasn't feeling my best that morning, there was no way I was leaving without capturing those iconic blue domes overlooking the Aegean Sea. Some moments are worth pushing through for.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/santorini-blue-dome-and-bell-tower-rebecca-herranen.html

#greece #architecture #travel #fineartphotography #art #buyintoart #art #europe #culture #island #wallart #decor #greekislands

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Santorini's iconic blue-domed church rises above whitewashed buildings overlooking the sparkling Aegean Sea. A pink bell tower and soft morning light add warmth to the classic Greek island landscape.

The savage bites back

Rooted in Brazilian modernism, anthropophagy devours and transforms culture, subverting colonial fears of cannibalism

by Sofia Cándano

https://aeon.co/essays/anthropophagy-art-flips-the-cannibal-worries-of-colonialism?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=693e35ffa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_07_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

Pau Brasil, written by Oswald de Andrade and illustrated by Tarsila do Amaral is being proofeed by @DProofreaders and it will be published pretty soon by PG.

#books #art #culture

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Abaporu, by Tarsila do Amaral. The original painting is on display at the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires. It depicts a distorted, monumental figure with an enormous foot and small head resting on hand, seated on green ground against a blue sky with a stylized yellow sun and a cactus.

💁🏻‍♀️ ICYMI: 📜🧑‍🌾 An animated short #film dispels common #myths about women in the #MiddleAges. Beyond working fields and running shops, #medieval women managed large estates and governed land as nuns while contributing to #science, #politics, and trades.

👉 Learn more: https://seethis.tv/post/illuminated-lives-a-brief-history-of-womens-work-in-the-middle-ages

#animation #art #arthistory #culture #europe #farming #food #history #illustration #medicine #nationalfilmboardofcanada #religion #textiles #weaving #womeninstem #tksst #video

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Three medieval-style manuscript illustrations set side by side in arched frames against a dark background. On the left, a woman uses a pickaxe to mine colorful ore from a rock wall. In the center, a woman wearing an apron works at an anvil with tongs and a hammer. On the right, a woman in a red gown holds a falcon on her gloved hand.

Films including "Grave of the Fireflies" and "The Boy and the Heron" are book adaptations, with literary influences showing up in some form in almost every Studio Ghibli film. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2026/07/25/books/studio-ghibli-books-adaptation/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #studioghibli #hayaomiyazaki #japaneseliterature #fantasy #adaptations

@tensob_ @internetarchive

So a better link to #Zalango ?

I was distracted by the notion of colonialism today, so I took some notes. We tend to treat colonialism as pertaining to countries 'out there' – 'over there'. If we are victims of colonisation, the oppressor is 'out there' but looking in.

📝 https://substack.com/@brywillis634737/note/c-299870495?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=pvxh5

🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4mNHkZWfXKDyCC5Ljsj758?si=Yd41XyNVRbSUcwXmzP8oKA

#philosophy #politics #power #language #colonialism #control #foucault #mbembe #marx #heidegger #fanon #perspective #podcast #blog #substack #spotify #culture #empire #hegemony #essay

Featured story: What changed? How did Christianity become the political weapon we see today?

A new book from historian Joseph L. Locke investigates how "militant" Christian nationalism became the state religion. https://www.texasobserver.org/one-state-under-god-book-review/

#books #religion #Texas #politics #USpol #culture #history #bookstodon

In this follow-up to the Merits of Meritocracy, I delved a little deeper into Trump and Plato's Republic.
https://philosophics.blog/2026/07/22/the-merits-of-meritocracy/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social
#philosophy #merit #business #linkedin #meritocracy #video #podcast #substack #politics #language #culture #dei #promotions #statistics #heuristics

I've been wittering on about the history and failings of Meritocracy, but I hadn't drafted a version for Substack.
👉 https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/the-merits-of-meritocracy

I've purposely left Trump, but clearly he's a central figure in this perspective. Very few situations merit meritocracy as a lens, but we seem to overextend it. It is certainly overrepresented in business.

#philosophy #merit #business #linkedin #meritocracy #video #podcast #substack #politics #language #culture #dei #promotions #statistics #heuristics

A quotation from Mark Twain

Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Novel (1889), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Part 3 “The Tale of the Lost Land,” ch. 8 “The Boss”

More about this quote: wist.info/twain-mark/85029/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #twain #marktwain #aconnecticutyankee #convention #culture #custom #heritage #ideas #socialchange #socialconventions #tradition

‘Nearly Erased From History’: This Famous Sculpture Of Cleopatra Disappeared For Over 100 Years. It Was Being Used As The Gravestone Of A Horse

By Braden Bjella

Edmonia Lewis' 1876 sculpture The Death of Cleopatra received critical acclaim, but the work of art — and the artist herself — were then forgotten for over a century.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/death-of-cleopatra-sculpture

More information about Edmonia Lewis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonia_Lewis

#art #culture #history

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The Death of Cleopatra Edmonia Lewis - Self-photographed, Caroline Léna Becker A marble sculpture titled "The Death of Cleopatra" by American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, depicting Cleopatra seated on a throne wearing a headdress, robes, and a serpent bracelet, her head tilted back at the moment of death. The ornate throne features carved sphinx heads on either armrest, and an inscription is visible on the base.

Today's slow rollout of the shocking findings in the AP/NORC survey includes:

Jews think both parties suck but will vote Democrat anyway, Jews are more concerned about antisemitism than non-Jews, and avg Americans think Trump supports Jews more than Jews think he does. 🤯🤡

Anyway... the comments are the real America. Worth perusing.

"The new #survey of 1,022 #Jewish adults — including people who identify as Jewish by #religion and religiously unaffiliated people who identify as Jewish through #culture, #ethnicity or family background — offers a rare detailed accounting of a key demographic that sits at the very center of some of the nation’s most divisive #political debates."

https://apnews.com/article/poll-jewish-adults-democrat-republican-trump-netanyahu-9114d71c93fad1997ae224e8992b7988

Same art, different name: would you see or hear it the same way?

A mislabelled concerto and other errors and tricks show that reputation affects how art is perceived, sometimes radically

by Rikki A Wolpowitz

https://psyche.co/ideas/same-art-different-name-would-you-see-or-hear-it-the-same-way

Books in Music at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/50

#books #art #musicology #culture

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Haydn or Hofmann? Portrait of Franz Joseph Haydn (1770). An 18th-century oil portrait of a middle-aged man with powdered white hair, wearing a dark coat with a white cravat, holding a quill pen and gazing thoughtfully to the side.

If you're around the Earl's court or Brompton areas then you might be interested in our free poetry walking tours https://roguegunners.com/index.php/walking-tours/ #Culture #Poetry #UK