Informação
Benfica 2022

Group
A group is a collection of individuals, and the prejudices and shortcomings of individuals are likely to be found at group level too. However, groups often behave bullishly, reaching more polarized decisions than individuals. Irvin Janis has studied the rationality of group decision-making, using the Orwellian term “groupthink” to refer to poor group thinking. Janis identifies three aspects to groupthink: a tendency to overestimate the group, giving rise to the illusion of invulnerability; a lack of openmindedness in decision-making, disregarding additional (outside) information; a craving for uniformity, leading to self-censorship, with direct pressure being exerted on dissenters in the drive towards unanimity. [Cambridge University Press]
An Angel from the Bible
This is The Way White Man
Aeroporto de Lisboa – Pier Sul
Estudo conceptual desenvolvido no âmbito de consulta realizada pela ANA Aeroportos de Portugal para o projecto de expansão do Aeroporto Humberto Delgado. Cunha Ferreira Arquitectos – 2019
Reforma Administrativa de Lisboa Norte
Neste artigo iremos discutir a reforma dos limites administrativos dos municípios de Lisboa, Oeiras, Amadora, Odivelas e Loures. A situação atual:
- Expansão do município de Lisboa: a fronteira do município de Lisboa seria alargada até à autoestrada CRIL \ IC17 \ A36 mais a zona de Sacavém entre a autoestrada A1 e rio Tejo e rio Trancão. Com esta atualização, Lisboa ganharia os seguintes bairros: Alfornelos (Amadora), Pontinha, Serra da Luz, Senhor Roubado, Olival Basto (Odivelas), Fetais, Prior Velho, Portela, Moscavide e Sacavém (Loures).
- Odivelas, nova freguesia de Loures: devido à perda de população e território de Loures e Odivelas devido ao ponto 1, Odivelas seria transformada de município em freguesia do município de Loures.
- Partição do município de Sintra em dois municípios, Sintra e Belas: o município atual de Sintra seria separado em dois, o de Sintra, com a vila histórica, praias atlânticas, zona rural, e o Belas, com a zona urbana da Linha de Sintra e alguma zona saloia. O novo munício de Sintra teria as freguesias de Sintra, Colares e São João das Lampas. O novo município terias as freguesias de Almargem do Bispo, Algueirão – Mem Martins, Rio de Mouro, Cacém, Mira-Sintra, Massamá, Queluz e Casal de Cambra.
- Alfragide, nova freguesia de Oeiras: a freguesia de Alfragide atualmente no município da Amadora seria transferida como está para o município de Oeiras.
- Amadora, nova freguesia de Belas: a Amadora seria transformada de município em freguesia do novo município de Belas, criado no ponto 3. Relembramos que devido ao ponto 4, a freguesia de Alfragide já estaria no município de Oeiras quando tal acontecesse.
Contrarian
A contrarian is a person who holds a contrary position, especially a position against the majority. In investing, a contrarian is an investor who buys shares of stock when most others are selling and sells when others are buying and usually is the successful investor who knows when to sell and when to buy since the most common trend one will identify in the stock market (or in any other platform of exchange) is that most people follow a herd mentality. There is a parallel to every other area of social interplay since contrarians reject to conform with social trends or instinctual responses to social triggers without thoroughly analyzing the factors that led to their ignition. “A contrarian isn’t one who always objects – that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform.” Naval @ Twitter
Et tu, Japan?
Naomi Osaka, who represents Japan, served as the final Olympic torchbearer for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, lighting the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony.
However, before I am an athlete, I am a black woman. And as a black woman, I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. [Naomi Osaka (August 2020), Twitter]
Zero Tolerance
Solstício do Inverno
– Com certeza, Quitéria. Quando foi a última vez que o fizeste?
– Acho que foi antes do Natal.
– Queres dizer antes do solstício do inverno, não é? Como sabes, Advento, Natal, Quaresma e Páscoa, são designações cristãs autorreferenciais, que dividem os homens e ofendem os nossos irmãos muçulmanos, judeus, hindus, ateus e agnósticos. Por isso, o novo calendário litúrgico, em vez de utilizar denominações supremacistas e confessionais, usa as estações do ano, que são mais inclusivas, inter-religiosas e universais. E que pecados cometeste, desde então?
No Trace Of Individuality
Edward Hopper






25 de Abril
Cynical Theories
Kenji Kawai – Symphony – Ghost In The Shell
2012
Problematics
Dunkirk (2017) – Churchill’s Address
Satan
Never did We send a messenger or a prophet before thee, but, when he framed a desire, Satan threw some (vanity) into his desire: but Allah will cancel anything (vain) that Satan throws in, and Allah will confirm (and establish) His Signs: for Allah is full of Knowledge and Wisdom. (Quran 22:52)
That He may make the suggestions thrown in by Satan, but a trial for those in whose hearts is a disease and who are hardened of heart: verily the wrong-doers are in a schism far (from the Truth). (Quran 22:53)
Sex Appeal
Axl Rose at The Whisky, 1986.
The S Curve
As far as its neighbors are concerned, a neuron can only be in one of two states: firing or not firing. This misses an important subtlety, however. A typical neuron spikes occasionally in the absence of stimulation, spikes more and more frequently as stimulation builds up, and saturates at the fastest spiking rate it can muster, beyond which increased stimulation has no effect. Rather than a logic gate, a neuron is more like a voltage-to-frequency converter. The curve of frequency as a function of voltage looks like an elongated S and it is variously known as the logistic, sigmoid, or S curve. Peruse it closely, because it’s the most important curve in the world. At first the output increases slowly with the input, so slowly it seems constant. Then it starts to change faster, then very fast, then slower and slower until it becomes almost constant again. The transfer curve of a transistor, which relates its input and output voltages, is also an S curve. So both computers and the brain are filled with S curves. But it doesn’t end there. The S curve is the shape of phase transitions of all kinds: the probability of an electron flipping its spin as a function of the applied field, the magnetization of iron, an ion channel opening in a cell, water evaporating, the inflationary expansion of the early universe, the spread of new technologies, white flight from multiethnic neighborhoods, epidemics, revolutions, and much more. The Tipping Point could equally well (if less appealingly) be entitled The S Curve. Joseph Schumpeter said that the economy evolves by cracks and leaps: S curves are the shape of creative destruction. The effect of financial gains and losses on your happiness follows an S curve, so don’t sweat the big stuff. In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, when Mike Campbell is asked how he went bankrupt, he replies, “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” That’s the essence of an S curve.
The S curve is not just important as a model in its own right; it’s also the jack-of-all-trades of mathematics. If you zoom in on its midsection, it approximates a straight line. Many phenomena we think of as linear are in fact S curves, because nothing can grow without limit. Because of relativity, and contra Newton, acceleration does not increase linearly with force, but follows an S curve centered at zero. If you zoom out from an S curve, it approximates a step function, with the output suddenly changing from zero to one at the threshold. So depending on the input voltages, the same curve represents the workings of a transistor in both digital computers and analog devices like amplifiers and radio tuners. The early part of an S curve is effectively an exponential, and near the saturation point it approximates exponential decay. When someone talks about exponential growth, ask yourself: How soon will it turn into an S curve? When will the population bomb peter out, Moore’s law lose steam, or the singularity fail to happen? Differentiate an S curve and you get a bell curve: slow, fast, slow becomes low, high, low. Add a succession of staggered upward and downward S curves, and you get something close to a sine wave. Children’s learning is not a steady improvement but an accumulation of S curves. So is technological change.
The Master Algorithm (2015) by Pedro Domingos
Motivational Triad
The primary purpose of your brain is to keep you alive. Our brains focus on 3 simple motivations to increase our odds of survival: avoid pain, seek pleasure and conserve energy. This is the motivational triad. You will always be motivated to do something that won’t hurt you, feels good, and is easy. This is how we humans survived back in the day. We were motivated to hunt, have sex and seek warm shelter by our desire for pleasure. We stayed alert to avoid danger. We didn’t go jogging just for the sport of it. We conserved our energy.
Powers of Ten
Powers of Ten (1977) takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.
In Motion
Angeles set in motion the sphere of fixed stars, which in turn drives all the other spheres. [France, 14th century]
A Lifestyle Brand
The Lebenswelt
Seeds of Genocide
The first step to eliminate an ethnic group, or population, is to deny that population medical treatment. In the US, several public institutions are calling for the new Coronavirus vaccine being administrate first to non-White people because White people don’t deserve it:
Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.” [NYT]
The message is clear, White people can be sacrificed and killed in a state sponsored racial, and racist, policy.
The Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian Explosion refers to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains. It may represent the most important evolutionary event in the history of life on Earth. The beginning of the explosion is generally placed about 542 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period at the start of the Palaeozoic Era. While the explosion was rapid in geological terms, it took place over millions of years – the Burgess Shale, at 505 million years old, records the tail end of the event. The explosion is particularly remarkable because all major animal body plans appeared during this time, changing the biosphere forever. The rapid appearance of a wide variety of animals led to the development of radical new ecological interactions such as predation. Consequently, ecosystems became much more complex. The fundamental ecological structure of modern marine communities was firmly established during the Cambrian. By the end of the Period, some animals had also made the first temporary forays onto land, soon to be followed by plants. When he published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Charles Darwin puzzled over the apparently sudden appearance of complicated organisms in the fossil record at the beginning of the Cambrian Period. He noted this could be used as an argument against his controversial new theory, which predicted a more gradual appearance of simpler organisms. At the time, Darwin pointed to the imperfection of the fossil record as his only defence, arguing complex animal life must have lived long before the Cambrian, but traces of that life had not yet been found. The presence of large, soft-bodied, putative animals (problematic as they may be) in Ediacaran seas does indeed make the “explosion” appear less abrupt. But the fact remains that the Early Cambrian was a time of major change in marine animal communities and environments, with the rapid and unprecedented advent of disparate new body plans and novel ecological niches. – https://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/science/origin/04-cambrian-explosion.php
Fermi Paradox
In a Nutshell – KURZGESAGT
A República de Veneza, e Portugal
Em Portugal, em 2019, 93,4% das mulheres e 97,6% dos homens do escalão etário dos 18 aos 29 anos não tinham filhos. INE
Snail
The Middle Children of History
The Man Who Sold The World
Biden, The Kneeler
Perspective
The peak of the Roman Empire was 2,000 years ago.
So to the Romans, the pyramids were as old as the Romans are to us today.
The IQ Problem
Jobs for people with IQs of less than 85 are very, very rare. So what the hell are those people supposed to do? It’s 15 percent of the population! Well, we better figure it out because one of the things that’s happening is that as the high IQ tech geeks get a hold of the world, the demand for cognitive power is increasing, not decreasing. It’s a problem that has to be dealt with. [Jordan Peterson – 2017 Personality 18: Biology & Traits: Openness/Intelligence/Creativity I]
Security Layers
First, the bad news. You can’t do anything about the top layer. The secret services, spy agencies, Deep State, will always know everything about you. They have access to the databases, to the hardware unique identifiers, to the network operators metadata, to the cloud data centers, to the on premises servers backdoors… So they can cross all the data and catch you. And if you are really threatening them or their interests, they will just bomb your house with a drone and blame it on a domestic gas explosion. This is where our Big Money overlords rule and you can’t escape their power.
Now, the good news. You can do something about the two bottom layers. You must have digital hygiene, discipline and be proactive to achieve it though. First, imagine if a cop or border agent stops you and asks for your phone, unlocked. You can always refuse of course but through violence, and even torture, they can indeed get the accesses they want from you. So you mustn’t have any application or data in your phone that compromises you. Always prefer the web mobile pages and not the applications. If you have an email, archive the important emails in an offline storage, delete the others and always have only the absolutely essential emails that you need. The same thing for your photos or digital documents. If you have accounts in Big Tech like Twitter or Facebook, always have an official account, connected to your personal email and phone, but where you keep it to the bare minimum. Consider it your fake “good boy” persona. Open different accounts with different alias, using random phone numbers that you bought only for this purpose, where you join political and other groups, and leave your opinions. This accounts are disposable and you should regularly open new ones and forget about the old ones.
In a Age where Big Media and Big Tech in the Western world impose a political and social ideology, you have to be extra careful if you don’t follow their mantras. Even you if don’t bring your phone in your travels or when you go out take a coffee, don’t forget that the Justice system of your country can demand your information from Big Tech anytime, and without any justification. The fight against terrorism or “hate speech” have created many loopholes. So, also change regularly your official accounts, change your email, change your phone and delete the accounts. When you delete a Google account you aren’t only deleting the data but also your shadow, the AI algorithm that Google and others created to ask and receive questions about you. Everything about you.
The Critical Race Theory Framework
- Normal racism – Dehumanize, attack or discriminate against an ethnic group or individuals because they are of a specific race.
- Antisemitism – Dehumanize, attack or discriminate against Jewish people’s or individuals because they have too much privilege, power or wealth.
- Critical Race Theory – Dehumanize, attack or discriminate against White, and other “White adjacent”, people’s or individuals because they have too much privilege, power or wealth.
A Carpet of Sound
Rosario Dawson
The European Mental Framework
Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs (2017)
Egyptian President Gamal Adbel Nasser (1966)
Signo, Significante e Significado
Lugares
Samuel Paty died. For what?
Trajectory
Deixe o Barro Secar
Portugal Demasiado Branco
Pay Attention
Harrison Bergeron
Saudades do Portugal que Nunca Tive
Tirem-me tudo, Azeite Gallo, 2006
White Privilege
Maior Que Portugal
Nacionalismo Étnico Português
Maiores e Misteriosos
Vão rareando — ai de mim! — os navios de vela nos mares!
E eu, que amo a civilização moderna, eu que beijo com a alma as máquinas,
Eu o engenheiro, eu o civilizado, eu o educado no estrangeiro,
Gostaria de ter outra vez ao pé da minha vista só veleiros e barcos de madeira,
De não saber doutra vida marítima que a antiga vida dos mares!
Porque os mares antigos são a Distância Absoluta,
O Puro Longe, liberto do peso do Actual…
E ah, como aqui tudo me lembra essa vida melhor,
Esses mares, maiores, porque se navegava mais devagar.
Esses mares, misteriosos, porque se sabia menos deles.
ODE MARÍTIMA, Álvaro de Campos, Fernando Pessoa
The Start Trek Fantasy
Rome, the Civilisation State
Concentration
A Ideologia Afrocentrista à Conquista da História
Anhedonia
Shutting Myself Away
Supernormal Stimuli
The Fixed Period
Sometimes
Prepare To Be Cancelled

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity
Tudo Irá Acabar
Whiteness
Cuban Beauty
Metro Ligeiro de Superfície entre Algés e Falagueira
[2004] – O metro ligeiro de superfície Algés – Falagueira é um meio de transporte mais rápido e com um orçamento menos elevado na sua construção do que o metro subterrâneo actualmente explorado em Lisboa. A nova infra-estrutura visa reforçar a mobilidade na área ocidental da Grande Lisboa pelo que contempla ligações com as linhas ferroviárias de Cascais e de Sintra. A ligação ao Metropolitano será igualmente possível, na Falagueira. A linha Algés – Falagueira contempla 15 paragens: Algés (interface com a estação da CP), Algés-Centro, Algés-Norte, Algés-Miraflores, Miraflores, Outurela, Quinta do Paizinho, Bairro do Zambujal, Alfragide, Alfragide/IC19, Damaia, Damaia (interface com a estação da CP), Venda Nova, Venda Nova Norte, Falagueira (interface com a linha azul do Metro). A distância média entre cada paragem é de 530 metros e o tempo de viagem será de cerca de vinte minutos. O investimento global no metro ligeiro de superfície que irá ligar os concelhos de Oeiras e Amadora está inicialmente orçado em 232 milhões de euros. O metro irá contar com corredores próprios o que irá obrigar a uma reconversão urbana. Com o objectivo de ser criada uma circular periférica de metro ligeiro de superfície em torno de Lisboa, concluída esta etapa do projecto, a segunda fase compreende a ligação entre Falagueira, Odivelas e Loures. – https://www.cmjornal.pt/portugal/detalhe/metro-mais-curto
Selar Lisboa
Asceticism
America’s White Saviors
[by Zach Goldberg (2019), https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors]
Chaos Monster and Sun God
The Backlog
Phaethon
Here Phaethon lies: in Phoebus’ car he fared,
And though he greatly failed, more greatly dared.
The last days of a white world
- In the United Kingdom, the number of people from ethnic minorities has risen from a few tens of thousands in 1950 to more than 3 million now.
- In Italy, the birth rate is so low that, without immigration, the population is predicted to decline by 16 million by 2050.
- The United States government predicts that non-hispanic whites will become a minority in the country by 2055.
- The United Nations predicts that 98 per cent of world population growth until 2025 will be in developing nations.
- The population of Europe is expected to drop from 25 per cent of the world total in 1900 to 7 per cent in the next 50 years.
Aparição
Neon Genesis Portugal
Globalism Kills


Sleeping Hermaphroditus


Where Money Comes From
Rivers of Blood
The UK Police Takes a Knee, George Floyd manifestation, London, 2020
O Sublime
Tomada de consciência da pequenez e da grandeza do homem era como Kant definia o efeito causado pelo sublime, porque o infinito esmaga-nos, mas o pensamento sobre o infinito eleva-nos, de modo que o sentimento do sublime provoca, em simultâneo, dor, medo e prazer. [Pierre Hadot (2019), Não Te Esqueças de Viver]
The Post-White, Post-Western, Post-Christian, Euro-American World
Clown World
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Rachel McKinnon, 37, is pictured left alongside her fellow female competitors |
Other women who have been beaten by McKinnon have also said she has an unfair advantage. The woman who placed third on Saturday, Danish cyclist Kirsten Herup Sovang, has said she fully supports McKinnon’s win. [MailOnline (2019)]
Perigo
Existem cinco características que são perigosas num general:
- Disposto a morrer: pode ser morto.
- Determinado a sobreviver: pode ser capturado.
- Irascível: pode ser insultado.
- Inseguro: pode ser humilhado.
- Complacente: pode ser desrespeitado.
[A Arte da Guerra de Sun Tzu]
The Lighthouse

Gelados Freudianos
Por Quem Os Sinos Dobram
Por Quem os Sinos Dobram
Alter Ego
The End of WASP America
A Model
The world is concurrent.
Things in the world don’t share data.
Things communicate with messages.
Things fail.
Never Ending Inertia
Portugal Sequestrado
O Estado de Lisboa controla o país através dos deputados que coloca em cada círculo eleitoral: o eleitor de Bragança devia votar no Homem da sua terra, mas acaba por votar no deputado que o Estado de Lisboa colocou nesse círculo, sendo que na maioria das vezes nem do distrito é ou não reside no mesmo há décadas. Todas as instituições e empresas públicas relevantes encontram-se em Lisboa. Portugal pode estar a desfazer-se, alunos sem professores, urgências hospitalares sem médicos, dezenas de pessoas a morrerem carbonizadas nas estradas, os rios secos com a água retida em Espanha, portugueses expulsos das suas terras natais porque a pressão turística e estrangeiros ricos assim o desejam… Nada disso interessa, pois o Estado de Lisboa controla o território via instituições e vassalos instalados e a população via o regime de eleições e rendas que lhes distribui.
Assim sendo, as eleições nada podem mudar pois a população na sua maioria é pobre e dependente das transferências do Estado de Lisboa: são funcionários públicos, pensionistas ou dependentes de subsídios. A sua existência, assim como o da sua família, depende da caridade do Estado de Lisboa. São mais de 6 milhões num país de 10 milhões. Quem pode então derrubar o regime instituído desde 1974 em Portugal pelo Estado de Lisboa? Quem tem as armas e as sabe usar. Num país em qua não existe serviço militar obrigatório e o povo não tem a cultura de ter armas em casa, como nos EUA por exemplo, apenas quem tem o monopólio da força pode mudar e depor este regime.
Por isso mesmo o Estado de Lisboa colocou muros de betão à volta da Assembleia e cercou-se com centenas de polícias. Forças de segurança fora do muro a mostrarem ao Estado de Lisboa que estão presentes, forças de segurança dentro do muro para proteger o Estado de Lisboa, a sua casta e os seus privilégios. O muro que separa as forças de segurança também separa todos os outros portugueses. Portugal está sequestrado pelo Estado de Lisboa. Apenas quem tem armas e as sabe usar pode acabar com o mesmo. E os burocratas, políticos, nobres, e teólogos de Lisboa sabem disso.
Divina Providência
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Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power (1633) |
Na terça-feira à noite, a autoproclamada presidente da Bolívia, Jeanine Añez Chavez, falou ao parlamento boliviano segurando uma Bíblia. Era uma clara afronta ao ex-presidente, que baniu o livro sagrado do palácio presidencial em 2009, quando a nova constituição instituiu que a Bolívia é um país laico. Agora parece ter chegado a hora da revanche. Luis Fernando Camacho, líder da direita bíblia, organizou a oposição à Evo com uma bíblia na mão: “A Pachamama nunca voltará ao Palácio. Bolívia é de Cristo”, disse numa gravação feita para as redes sociais. No Twitter disse ainda que pediria a prisão de Evo e seus ministros: “No es veganza, es justicia divina.” [Carol Pires (2019), Globo]
Blindness and Hallucination
A question that has since hung like a sword of Damocles over all knowledge, from the most trivial to the most advanced: How can we ever be justified in generalizing from what we’ve seen to what we haven’t?
Thus a good learner is forever validating the narrow path between blindness and hallucination.
[Pedro Domingos (2015), The Master Algorithm, Penguin Books]
The Derangement Olympics
But the problem is not with the smarter students, who like most smart people will always find a way to navigate around the lies and dogmas of their age, but the less intelligent applicants. A rather basic knowledge of maths would help such people and come in very handy in their lives: in ordering their finances, and working out their day-to-day interactions with others. If they do not pick up these basics at school, then it is highly unlikely that they will pick them up at some later stage, the education system offering the best chance anyone ever has to surpass their forebears.
It should, in theory, also offer them the chance to escape the ideological straitjackets of their time. How disturbing it is to learn that instead, even in a discipline like maths, students will be cocooned and imprisoned in the lies of their age rather than being given the chance to escape them.
Os Indígenas Portugueses
Será este o meu fim?
Temo que sim.
E o que será da montanha, regressará alguma vez ao que foi outrora?
Não, mas enquanto o Sol brilhar sobre nós, esta montanha perdurará, mas isso não é grande consolo, pois não?
Não para nós.
[Andrómeda, Zé Burnay]

Portugueses Retornados de África em 1975
Carmen
The Brexit Asian Vote
However, there is data to suggest that the strength of euroscepticism within the British South Asian population was perhaps stronger than previously anticipated.
A number of jurisdictions with large South Asian populations delivered Leave votes, including Luton (56.5% Leave), Hillingdon (56.4% Leave), Slough (54.3% Leave) and Bradford (54.2% Leave). All have South Asian populations of 25% and above. It’s not unreasonable to think that such Leave votes could not have been delivered without a significant number of Asian voters opting for Brexit.
One reason might be that many voters within the British South Asian diaspora don’t feel European. When the Remain campaign sought to appeal to a sense of European identity, and warned that people were about to lose that identity, it didn’t make for a particularly convincing argument.
First-generation migrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were encouraged to integrate under a social policy based on the adoption of “British values”. Being absorbed into a “European collective” was never, in reality, really part of that integration process.
The pro-Commonwealth rhetoric coming from the Leave camp, on the other hand, would have pulled on the heartstrings of many South Asian voters.
The Commonwealth argument became particularly interesting when the Leave campaign talked about immigration. Prominent Leave campaigners such as Michael Gove often claimed that the EU was essentially forcing Britain to implement a “racist” immigration system. While predominantly white EU migrants were allowed to freely enter the UK, those from the Indian subcontinent were subject to visa and work restrictions. Voting Brexit was seen as an opportunity to “level out” this in-built unfairness.
[Rakib Ehsan (2017), London School of Economics]
Polite, Restrained and Repressed
Descobrimentos
James Watson
“No,’’ Dr. Watson said. “Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.’’
https://www.theburkean.ie/articles/2019/01/18/james-watson-a-modern-day-galileo
Daily Gondor
Opportunities
The Eternal Return
Work
Paradise
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Bāgh-e Shāzdeh Mahan |
Have a Drink
Knowledge Portfolio
- Serious investors invest regularly, as a habit.
- Diversification is the key to long-term success.
- Smart investors balance their portfolios between conservative and high-risk, high-reward investments.
- Investors try to buy low and sell high for maximum return.
- Portfolios should be reviewed and rebalanced periodically.
[Andrew Hunt, David Thomas (2004), The Pragmatic Programmer, Pearson Education]
Cadeia de Valor
The Poet’s Muse
Courage
I love it when people say that they’d stand up to the Nazis if they were living in Germany in the 1940s.
I always think to myself “mate you can’t even tell 10 year olds to turn their music down when you’re on the bus”.
[Francis Foster @failinghuman]
Obrigado Jonas
Portugal Liberal
O líder do partido lembrou ainda que esta proposta, “apesar de disruptiva em Portugal, já foi aplicada noutras economias da Europa, nomeadamente na Estónia, que têm crescido a níveis mais elevados que a economia portuguesa nos últimos 20 anos”.
E, segundo dados da Pordata, “a economia da Estónia cresceu a mais do dobro do ritmo da portuguesa desde a introdução da taxa única sobre os rendimentos” e “em 2017 ultrapassou Portugal”. [Observador (2019)]
Quotes
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. – Hunter S. Thompson
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. – Martin Fowler
Compassion must be rational to be effective. – Peter Hitchens
A society that competes with biology is bound to lose. – Lamberto Maffei
Creativity is the union of existing elements with new useful connections. – Lamberto Maffei
For the Left, the rational should be real, for the Right, the real was the rational. – Jaime Nogueira Pinto
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana
The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. – Herbert Simon
After their final retirement from office or factory, people increasingly drop out of the consciousness of friends who only knew them because of what they did, rather than because of who they are. – Peter Hitchens
A person who extracts income and status from his own human capital places himself at the disposal of others: he uses himself up. – Daniel Markovits
Let’s defend one of our most precious liberties, the right to say: “Sorry, I just don’t know”. – Lara Prendergast
Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here. – Interstellar (2014), Directed by Christopher Nolan
The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well. – Andrés Segovia
We all have to be used up by something. – Wendell Berry
He is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy. – Viktor Frankl
Know your potential weaknesses so that you can anticipate and develop compensating controls. – unknown author
A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. – John A. Shedd
A person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. – J. Pierpont Morgan
A man without a smiling face must not open a shop. – Old Chinese proverb
Life is what we make of it. Travels are travelers. What we see is not what we see but what we are. – Fernando Pessoa
If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels. – Tennessee Williams
If they had lacked the opportunity, the virtue of their spirit would have been sapped; if they had lacked virtue, the opportunity would have been wasted. – Machiavelli
Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. – Kenneth Clark
Work and action are the precondition for developing a meaningful identity. – Frank Furedi
One of the most common forms of laziness is staying busy. – Robert Kiyosaki
For when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. – Nietzsche
Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen
For Homer, life, this small, ephemeral and so common a thing, has no value in itself. It becomes worth something only because of its intensity, its beauty, and the breath of greatness that everyone can give it — above all in his own eyes. – Dominique Venner
Punk Rock should mean freedom, liking and accepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long it is good and has passion. – Kurt Cobain
The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. – Fernando Pessoa
Scientism is rarely explicit about its political objectives, which is why its role as an ideology is so rarely visible and recognized. – Frank Furedi
Make Wakanda Great Again
Definitivamente
Our Suicidal Elites
The Internalisation of the Fatwa
Kafka in Amadora
Sem Propósito
Onde estava no 12 de Junho?
[Rui Ramos (2015), Observador]
What Do You Fight For?

Company Hierarchy
The Losers like to feel good about their lives. They are the happiness seekers, rather than will-to-power players, and enter and exit reactively, in response to the meta-Darwinian trends in the economy. But they have no more loyalty to the firm than the Sociopaths. They do have a loyalty to individual people, and a commitment to finding fulfillment through work when they can, and coasting when they cannot.
The Clueless are the ones who lack the competence to circulate freely through the economy (unlike Sociopaths and Losers), and build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them. To sustain themselves, they must be capable of fashioning elaborate delusions based on idealized notions of the firm. Unless squeezed out by forces they cannot resist, they hang on as long as possible, long after both Sociopaths and Losers have left.
[Venkatesh Rao (2009), ribbonfarm]
Idiocracy
Paradise

Conservative
Citizens
Time
Bárbaros e Iluminados – Populismo e Utopia no Século XXI
Symbolic
Sapere Aude
The Library of Babel
Survivorship Bias
Inspired by: Jordan Ellenberg (2015). How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Penguin Books.
A Futile Struggle
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Institute for Nuclear Research, Kiev |
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Festina lente
X. War And Warriors
Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars – and the short peace more than the long.
You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!
War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.
Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.
Resistance – that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!
I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1891). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.
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Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (Casper David Friedrich) |
The Soup
Dogs and Wolves
Inspired by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2018). Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Allen Lane.
Location, Location, Location
The psychoanalyst, exalted by followers as the man who opened up the secrets of the mind, lived and practised on the city’s Berggasse.
The young Josip Broz, later to find fame as Yugoslavia’s leader Marshal Tito, worked at the Daimler automobile factory in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of Vienna.
Then there was the 24-year-old from the north-west of Austria whose dreams of studying painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts had been twice dashed and who now lodged in a doss-house in Meldermannstrasse near the Danube, one Adolf Hitler. No-one knows if Hitler bumped into Trotsky, or Tito met Stalin. The conflagration which erupted the following year destroyed much of Vienna’s intellectual life.
The empire imploded in 1918, while propelling Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Tito into careers that would mark world history forever. [BBC]
Humanity
Luisão

Mosteiro
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Lisboa, Portugal (2019) |
The Master Algorithm
La ruée vers l’Europe
A Pressão Iberista
Não haja dúvidas, sem Ceuta, sem o Império, regressamos à geopolítica peninsular onde tudo começou, e onde atualmente pontuam as referidas forças centrípetas. Não haja ilusões: o apoio à fragmentação peninsular crescerá de forma diretamente proporcional à pressão iberista.
Os independentistas propõem a evolução constitucional da Espanha para uma confederação hispânica, que pode estimular as correntes iberistas tanto na Espanha, como em Portugal, e adicionar às dinâmicas de fragmentação as estratégias de integração peninsular. Ambas as tendências prejudicam os interesses portugueses, que só podem ser garantidos no quadro do status quo histórico em que assenta a dualidade peninsular.
Lisbon Resort Hotel
Lisbon Resort Hotel offers a large exterior garden, sandy beach and marina for stayers to enjoy the Portuguese mild weather during the year.
The Machine Fired Me
At work, when I scanned my key card at the turnstile, it flashed red, made a grumpy beep, and refused to disengage. I tried it a few more times, it kept flashing red and grumping. I threw a glance at Jose, he laughed and then pressed a button under his desk. The turnstile turned open. Jose was one of the security guards in the LA-1 skyscraper I worked in. Jose has seen me come to work everyday through those doors for more than half a year. Nothing interesting happened on that day.
It wasn’t the first time my key card failed, I assumed it was time to replace it. As soon as I got to my floor, I went to see my manager to let her know. She promised to order me a new one right away.
The director was furious. They had received a very threatening email to escort me out of the building and were just doing their job. I was fired. There was nothing my manager could do about it. There was nothing the director could do about it. They stood powerless as I packed my stuff and left the building.
I was on a 3 years contract and had only worked for 8 months. Just before I was hired, this company was acquired by a much larger company and I joined during the transition. My manager at the time was from the previous administration. One morning I came to work to see that his desk had been wiped clean, as if he was disappeared. As a full time employee, he had been laid off. He was to work from home as a contractor for the duration of a transition. I imagine due to the shock and frustration, he decided not to do much work after that. Some of that work included renewing my contract in the new system. When my contract expired, the machine took over and fired me.
A simple automation feature caused everything to collapse. I was escorted out of the building like a thief, I had to explain to people why I am not at work, my coworkers became distant.
Unencumbered
No, we were destined to live in the capital, child-free, lawn-free, hymn-free, unencumbered, without obligations to our parents, and the past, or to children, and the future. [Peter Hitchens]
Posture
Johnny Cameron
Fyfield, Wiltshire
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/the-church-of-england-must-be-robust-with-its-snowflake-congregants/
Are Europeans Making Themselves Stateless?
Ethnicity and race are typically avoided these days when thinking about the constitutive features of a nation or state, particularly Western ones. In their place, writers who take an interest in such matters tend to ground their ideas in culture, shared beliefs and customs. Samuel Gregg, for instance, writes of the shared bonds of “a common culture, language, beliefs, shared memories, sense of a common patrimony, and association with a particular territory with recognized boundaries.” What is often left unsaid, presumably for fear of attracting the poisonous charge of racism, is any connection this culture might have with ethnic origin.
This is all the more curious when you consider that on a sociological and anthropological level the connection between culture and ethnic group is very strong indeed. In fact, it would be difficult to find a more pronounced correlation between two observable factors than this. Logically, of course, there is no essential or necessary connection between an ethnicity and a culture, and in principle a person of any ethnic group could be raised in any culture and become accustomed to its norms. But this purely logical point only exceptionally translates into real world experience, where assimilation is rarely carried to perfection, the call of ethnic origin frequently pulls a person back towards traditional cultural forms, and experience of living as a minority often intensifies a commitment to traditional beliefs and practices amongst a group of people.
This is particularly true, of course, where such an outlook is encouraged, as was the case in Britain and many other Western countries under the doctrine of multiculturalism which dominated social policy between about 1974 and 2004, and arguably still does. But even without government encouragement people will naturally link their identity to their ethnicity and their ethnicity to the culture associated with it. This is surely why post-war ideas of anti-racism led very quickly to ideas of multiculturalism and, more recently, to identity politics—because of a sense that you cannot really affirm a person’s ethnic heritage without also affirming the culture associated with it. And it is only a small step from there to the thought that there is something imperialistic, intolerant, and dehumanizing about expecting a person to conform or assimilate to another culture. Today this worry has reached new intensities with ideas of cultural appropriation and micro-aggression rife among the educated, especially at universities.
Whatever else you want to say about ethnic diversity, then, it is plainly inseparable as a real world phenomenon from cultural diversity, for an ethnically diverse state will always to some degree or other be a culturally diverse one. Consequently, ethnic diversity within a state necessarily sits in some tension with the idea of a unified national and civic culture of a kind which is known to be strongly associated with high levels of social cohesion, solidarity, trust, and stability. In our very understandable and proper desire to avoid racial prejudice and be hospitable to newcomers of whatever background, therefore, we have perhaps lost sight of important general principles of social stability and harmony that should be forefront in our minds as we formulate social policy.
What does this mean for the prospects of the European peoples? A combination of high immigration, high birth-rate amongst immigrant communities, and low birth-rate amongst the indigenous population has resulted in dramatically increased (and increasing) ethnic diversity, alongside predictions that indigenous ethnic groups will become minorities in their home countries in the not too distant future. Were this to happen (and short of some drastic change in immigration policy and unforeseen reversal in demographic trends it is hard to see how it will not) it raises the strange possibility that European peoples will become stateless nations within their old countries. What does this mean?
A stateless nation is an ethnic group that currently lacks a state in which it forms a majority such as enables it to express its distinctive culture and achieve self-determination. Being in possession of a state allows the nation to protect itself from undesirable social outcomes such as colonization, subjection, persecution, prejudicial treatment, and assimilation. Prominent examples of stateless nations today include the Kurds, the Tamils and the Rohingya. Previous stateless nations that achieved statehood in the twentieth century include the Jews, the Serbs, and the Croats. If such nations are defined by the existence of secessionist or autonomist movements amongst a distinct ethnic group then there are an estimated seventy-eight in the world at the moment.
It is important to be clear here that this talk of stateless nations has nothing to do with white supremacy. There is no intimation of comparing races and claiming the superiority of one and its right to rule the rest (morally a deeply objectionable idea). More generally there is no suggestion of an imperative to preserve racial purity—ethnicity is an inherently living thing which evolves over time through processes such as immigration and intermarriage and little good is achieved by preventing that from occurring, at least at a rate consistent with integration and assimilation. Talk of stateless nations is rather about considering the sociological and psychological connections between ethnicity and culture and their links to nationhood and statehood, and asking questions about what self-determination means, how it is achieved, and how desirable it is.
Every state includes ethnic minorities of course. Sometimes, as with blacks in America, and Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, these minorities have a special and historic (and not always happy) relationship with the country and state within which they live. In other cases the minority group has been a more recent addition to the state’s ethnic mix. How a state incorporates these minorities, and how it understands them to relate to its concept of nationality, can vary considerably between groups and change over time depending on various historical factors and contingencies. For example, before the twentieth century, America conceived of itself as an ethnically European (white) nation, but more recently has sought to understand what it means to include black people (and other minorities) as full and equal citizens. The natural and tight relationship between ethnicity, culture, nationality and statehood means that such enterprises will never be straightforward and will always be fraught with tensions and difficulties, some of them intractable. The moral imperative of equal respect makes such enterprises necessary, but even allowing for that there is surely wisdom in aiming to prevent the degree of ethnic diversity in a state from increasing beyond levels consistent with social cohesion and the general welfare.
We need I think to take much more seriously the social, psychological, and moral threads which run between ethnicity and culture, and then on into nationhood and statehood. While avoiding racism or any of the old imperialism, this shift needs to work a revolution in the minds and attitudes of European peoples towards their home countries, their cultures, and their concern for self-determination as peoples and nations. This needs to proceed in the emergence of radically altered approaches to immigration, citizenship, culture, and even fertility and family, such as are sufficient to ensure that European states will retain their essential character as the home countries of the European peoples well into the future.
Can I see this happening? Only on days where my faith for miracles is high. But the alternative seems to me extraordinarily bleak, as European peoples face becoming minorities in their home countries, becoming stateless nations, and social discord and division increase beyond what free countries can realistically bear. I hope to be proven wrong in this, but I confess I am not holding my breath.
[Will Jones (2017), Crisis Magazine]
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John Wick 3 (2019), Directed by Chad Stahelski |
The Coming Software Apocalypse
Ovar
Tempo
Dunkirk
The Red Queen
Santíssima Trindade
Brainjunk
It is the deep irony of our times that readers, often deeply educated, will shell out $30 for a meal in New York or San Francisco while paying thousands in rent, only to avoid paying a few bucks a month for a publication, let alone ten. The bulk of the internet doesn’t pay for subscriptions. People will gladly spend hours a day reading brainjunk, to avoid even the slightest expense that might improve the quality of what they are reading. If you want to consume McDonald’s, be my guest. If you want to read whatever LinkedIn calls news, go right ahead. But if you actually want to learn, to improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world, you have to shell out. Start paying. [Danny Crichton, 2018]
Diversity: An Ideology
Justice Powell argued that “a diverse student body” was a worthy goal of any university which allowed the consideration of race in admissions. He justified this neither on the grounds of racial justice nor the amelioration of past or present discrimination, but on the grounds of diversity. Powell claimed that racial and ethnic diversity advanced the core intellectual mission of American higher education, namely “speculation, experiment and creation,” “the interplay of ideas and the exchange of views,” and an encounter of differing “ideas and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.” This claim hardly originated with Powell, of course. He was simply repeating the collective views of Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania as stated in their joint brief to the Court in defense of affirmative action.
Despite all this uncertainty, higher education displayed total unity of purpose in the Fisher case. Plaintiffs Abigail Noel Fisher applied to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and was denied admission. The woman, White, filed suit, alleging that the University had discriminated against her on the basis of her race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Briefs supporting the University of Texas were filed by seventy-five universities and colleges as well as by the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the Association of American Law Schools. Not one college, university, or educational organization filed in support of Abigail Fisher.
E Pluribus Unum
Meritocracy
Anatomy of a Genocide, A Cautionary Tale
Omer Bartov, the distinguished military historian, came from a family that had lived in Buczacz but emigrated to Israel. He begins by explaining that the Jews did not live segregated from the Christian population; the entire notion of a shtetl existing in some sort of splendid (or sordid) isolation is merely a figment of Jewish literary and folkloristic imagination. Integration was what made the existence of such towns possible. It was also what made the genocide there, when it occurred, a communal event, both cruel and intimate, filled with gratuitous violence and betrayal as well as flashes of altruism and kindness.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/ethnic-cleansing-and-the-horrors-of-buczacz/
Tommy Wiseau
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
As Mil e Uma Noites – 1° Volume
Russia Point of View
My Back
Witnessing The Collapse
Casual Nihilism
A MSc To Rule Them All
Douglas Murray
The Race-Relations Industry
Existential Exhaustion
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Alexey Kondakov takes figures from classical paintings and drops them into modern-day Kiev. |
Will France still be French in 2015?
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Le Figaro Magazine (1985) |
https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/france-terror-tax-attacks/2016/12/29/id/766109/
Ponto de Situação
O Inimigo Público resumiu o nosso mundo e o nosso Portugal em três títulos:
- Coreia do Norte choca o mundo ao lançar um míssil azul para os meninos e uma bomba cor-de-rosa para as meninas;
- LIDL vai mudar o azul-e-branco das igrejas gregas para não ofender a religião benfiquista;
- Secretário-de-Estado Pedro Nuno Santos assume publicamente que é gay, negro e refugiado.
Competitiveness
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Monica Bellucci in Malèna (2000), Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore |
Perfection
The Dilemma
Fundações
About Symbols
Prefácio
Quando comecei este blog acreditava convictamente numa cidadania universalista, mas acabei por ficar constipado por um vírus que infectou os EUA e já começou a contaminar a Europa. Um vírus que me impõe um rótulo qualquer: africano, gay, branco, cigano, negro, latino, whatever; ou seja, as minhas pertenças comunitárias, étnicas e religiosas sobrepõem-se a tudo o que Eu sou. É mais uma consequência inevitável de uma sociedade multicultural e multirracial do que algo propriamente premeditado; chamam a esta consequência Diversidade, porque simplesmente não sabem o que outra coisa chamar. Na verdade, até estou agradecido; sempre que vejo notícias de “White Americans”, “White police”, “White folks”, “White people”, sinto que é do meu povo que falam, e nem percebo o porquê disso. Sem querer, a minha tribo encontrou-me e eu nem a tive de procurar.
Not all those who wander are lost. (J. R. R. Tolkien) Nas minhas deambulações por Portugal encontrei um território abandonado de Portugalidade, à espera de uma nova bandeira, que certamente já não terá quinas. Por vezes encontrei resquícios do povo a que pertenço, nesses cafés centrais perdidos por aí, mas esse povo já foi diluído pela Globalização, por vezes consentida, por vezes forçada; já não existe Força, nem Vontade, e portanto o mesmo irá simplesmente desaparecer. Reconheço que no fundo apaixonei-me pela fantasia de ter um Portugal, um pedaço de terra meu e dos meus, que podia ser horrivelmente pobre, mas eu também o orgulhosamente seria.
Once Upon A Time
One hundred years ago, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War I ushered in the greatest period of violence against Christians in the region. The genocide waged by the Turks left at least two million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks dead. Nearly all were Christian. From 1910 to 2010, the percentage of the Middle Eastern population that was Christian continued to decline: once 14 percent of the population, Christians now make up roughly 4 percent. In Lebanon, the only country in the region where Christians hold significant political power, their numbers have shrunk over the past century, to 34 percent from 78 percent of the population. Low birthrates have contributed to this decline, as well as hostile political environments and economic crisis. Fear is also a driver. The rise of extremist groups, as well as the perception that their communities are vanishing, causes people to leave.
Eliza Griswold (2015), The New York Times
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Emile Charles Lecomte-Vernet – La Fidele |
Rihanna
Against Democracy
Finally
Beauty and the Beast
Linha Azul: Reboleira – Hospital
(obra de gui5000, SkyscraperCity)
Prolongamento Reboleira-Borel: a maior dificuldade aqui será o declive e uma curva acentuada, visto que o cais de resguardo da Reboleira é em linha reta. Possivelmente a estação do Borel terá de ser mais profunda que o normal. Prolongamento Borel-Hospital: Este prolongamento poderá ser feito parcialmente à superfície. Depois de passar o bairro do Borel, seria feito um viaduto por cima da IC-19 e a estação seria feita numa plataforma elevada, como o Campo Grande. Seria uma estação terminal, com vários términos para os comboios.
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Traçado entre a Reboleira e o Borel |
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Traçado entre o Borel e o Hospital |
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Estação do Hospital Amadora-Sintra |
Adeus Portugal
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Padrão Português da Namíbia (1486), Deutsches Historisches Museum |
The Cycle
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.
Estou Cansado
A Reforma da Primeira Liga
Eternal Recognition
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John Gast, American Progress, 1872 |
Wabi-sabi
The Experience of Beauty

Our Dismiss
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Il primo bacio – William Bouguereau |
Força
Deveis saber que há dois géneros de combate: um com as leis, outro com a força. O primeiro é próprio do homem, o segundo das bestas. Mas porque o primeiro muitas vezes não basta, convém recorrer ao segundo. (Maquiavel)
Jordan B Peterson
This is destined to produce societal resentment and disengagement on a generational scale. Female politicians, among others, scoff, and most men run scared or duck. Peterson is one of the very few to take this problem seriously and to help young people to navigate towards lives of meaning and purpose.
The Technical
When a perplexed Kilcullen began to investigate, he says, he discovered that the incongruous flags were linked to what he says is one of the most important, and unnoticed, weapons of guerrilla war in Afghanistan and across the world: the lightweight, virtually indestructible Toyota Hilux truck. “When a shipment of high-quality Hiluxes arrived, courtesy of the Canadian government,” Kilcullen explains, “they had little Canadian flags on the back. Because they were the real deal, and because of how the Hilux is seen, over time, strangely, the Canadian flag has become a symbol of high quality across the country. Hence the tattoos.”
Kilcullen, who has faced forces using the Hilux in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, says the vehicle’s longevity is a factor, as is the high ground clearance. “They cover the ground incredibly well,” he says. They are often used by insurgent forces as “a modern version of light cavalry. They move weapons into positions to fire, and can also shift people around very quickly, with a quick dismount. The Hilux is perfectly designed for that. I’ve seen 20 people and a mounted weapon on one.”
A former British special forces soldier, who asked not to be identified because he still consults on active operations, says he too has faced the Hilux, which he refers to as “the technical,” in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’d say the appeal is pretty simple,” he says. “You can’t underestimate the value of having a vehicle that is fast, will never break down, and is strong enough to mount a heavy weapon in the back.”
[Newsweek (2010), Ravi Somaiya]
Quem és tu Portugal?
Nasci em Portugal. Educaram-me a História de Portugal. Falo Português. Tenho um cartão de cidadão e um passaporte que dizem que eu sou Português. Mas isso basta? Que Cultura, História, Valores, Moral, partilho com os meus concidadãos, novos e antigos? Não os conheço, eles não me conhecem. Devo Ser como eles ou eles Serem como eu? Ambos somos Portugueses, mas quem define o que é a Portugalidade?
É certo que o fenómeno é Europeu, e Portugal apenas foi a reboque, como em muitas outras épocas, do que o que se faz para lá dos Pirenéus. A nação foi descredibilizada em termos intelectuais e políticos, especialmente a partir dos anos 1980. Não era uma comunidade com genuína existência real. Era uma mera construção social, uma “comunidade imaginada”. A sua dissolução em sociedades multiculturais, o mais possível diversas, tornou-se o novo ideal de perfeição e modelo de coexistência pacífica no Ocidente europeu. Não é um processo linear e contínuo, mas é a tendência que marca a transformação social e política da Europa no longo prazo. O mais complexo é a crescente heterogeneidade de Estados e sociedades que, num passado recente, eram bastante homogéneos em termos de grupo nacional. O afrouxamento dos laços nacionais deixou fundamentalmente um espaço vazio. Poucos se sentem genuinamente unidos por um europeísmo ou cosmopolitismo. Menos ainda estariam dispostos a sacrificar a sua vida por tais ideais. No território das grandes nações europeias surgiram então novos grupos culturais frequentemente acantonados em guetos, de dimensão e número (ainda) desconhecido. É algo demasiado evidente nas grandes metrópoles europeias: populações que se ignoram, ou conflituam culturalmente, pois não partilham os valores mais profundos que alicerçam a cidadania.
E afinal, o que os portugueses sentem sobre isto tudo? Os refugiados e os imigrantes são vistos de forma muito diferente pelos portugueses, diz o estudo “Europa, Migrações e Identidades”, do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, feito em 2016. Se Portugal fez caminho, tal como a maioria dos países europeus, para estar recetivo a receber cada vez mais refugiados nos últimos anos, o mesmo não se pode dizer quanto a receber imigrantes económicos. Juntamente com a Hungria e a República Checa, Portugal está entre os três países europeus que mais se opõem a receber imigrantes. Já no sentido oposto, os portugueses são dos que defendem uma maior flexibilidade aos critérios de entrada de refugiados. Isto revela um grave problema cognitivo e total desnorte sobre o que os portugueses querem de facto para este pedaço de terra.
Multitasking
The brain cannot be in two places at once, so what people are referencing as multitasking is actually what neuroscientists call task switching and that means rapidly moving back and forth between different tasks. (Devora Zack)
Knowledge
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. (Kahlil Gibran)
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Time Enough at Last |
A Seiva do Oeste
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Linha do Oeste |
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Serviço da Barraqueiro Transportes em 2015 |
Pact With the Devil
It was almost as though a tacit deal had been struck; you can have diversity, minority rights and discrimination laws if we can have privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts. The effect was to take policies that were popular with the public off the agenda on the grounds that they were publicly unacceptable. This applied both to left-wing and right-wing policies.
Compete
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About Luis Quiles Artworks |
Uncertainty
We cannot live with that awareness of the future always in our minds; uncertainty and hope are as essential to man as breath. (Judith Starkston)
Our Mind
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Steve Cutts |
You Couldn’t Make It Up
Danish officials said this week that 29 citizens were given $100,000 in public pension benefits because they were considered too ill or disabled to work, and they then fled to Syria to fight for the radical group. It took eight months before welfare authorities cut off benefits paid to a Swedish national who had joined the terror group in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa. Michael Skråmo, who grew up near Gothenburg, fled in 2014 with his wife and four children to Syria. Over the eight months, Skråmo was paid more than $5,000. Authorities concluded that several of the plotters in the Brussels and Paris terror attacks that killed 162 people in 2015 and 2016 were partly financed by Belgium’s social welfare system while they planned their atrocities. Radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, who was jailed for terrorist activities, urged followers to claim “jihadiseeker’s allowance”, a reference to the nation’s welfare system. His phrase echoes a manual released by the militant group in 2015. “How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide” advises that “if you can claim extra benefits from a government, then do so.”
Farid Ikken, 40, emerged from a crowd of tourists and swinging his weapon at three police officers.
Now it has emerged that he had worked as a reporter in Sweden and received the EU’s ‘National Journalist Prize Against Discrimination’.
He was given the accolade by officials in Brussels after writing an article about asylum seekers ‘who are not entitled to medical care and who are therefore forced to seek shelter’. After winning the prize in 2009, Ikken said: ‘it has been gratifying that attention has been paid to such important topics as discrimination and diversity.’ Ikken had studied at Stockholm university, and is thought to have married a Swedish woman during his time there.
He is currently enrolled as a doctoral student specialising in communication at Metz university, in eastern France.
Arnaud Mercier, his current PhD supervisor, told France’s LCI news channel: ‘From what I know of his personality, though we haven’t been in contact for a while, this leaves me completely stupefied. He was very dedicated, he acknowledged the values of democracy, he believed very much in journalistic ideals.’
Uma Essência
O princípio que o trabalho é objeto de uma construção, de um tornar-se; e não objeto de uma essência, de um ser. (O Operário em Construção)
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My Coding Skills |
Impossible to Emerge
Redundant
The Strong Horse
When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse. (Osama bin Laden)
Abedi was born in Manchester on New Year’s Eve 1994 to Libyan parents, who had fled that country. Having spent a few years in London, the family moved to Manchester where his father used to do the call to prayer at a mosque in Didsbury.
Abedi went to school in Manchester and on to Salford University before dropping out, and worked in a bakery.
Friends remember him as a good footballer, a keen supporter of Manchester United and a user of cannabis.
O Tetra
Justiça Social
Nos finais de 1960 alguns intelectuais marxistas franceses foram ainda mais longe. Derrotadas as suas ideias na União Soviética, desviaram o foco das classes trabalhadoras para as divisões étnicas da sociedade, criando assim o cultural-marxismo. Mais uma vez, o mesmo não procura a igualdade de oportunidades, mas sim a igualdade de resultados. Como Noam Chomsky formulou: A engenharia social do Estado-providência procura anular a meritocracia, processo em que o conhecimento e a capacidade técnica conferem poder; a mesma é vista como uma ideologia egoísta de uma elite meritocrática que como Marx explicou, “define as condições especiais da sua emancipação como as únicas condições gerais capazes de salvar a sociedade moderna”.
Em Portugal, Catarina Marcelino, secretária de Estado para a Cidadania e Igualdade, diz que “temos uma base cultural que precisa de uma intervenção grande, uma sociedade machista que é preciso mudar”. Como não pode entrar na casa de cada português para mudar mentalidades e derrubar estereótipos de género, a secretária de Estado arranjou uma chave alternativa: a introdução da Educação para a cidadania nos currículos do ensino público desde o pré-escolar. Catarina Marcelino vê esta alteração curricular como o motor de ignição de uma catadupa de mudanças estruturais na sociedade portuguesa a longo prazo. “A escola pública forma pessoas, e formar pessoas não é só ensinar matemática. A igualdade de género vai influenciar o combate à violência doméstica porque deixam de existir desigualdades nas relações de poder. Daqui a dez anos já haverá efeitos sociais positivos”, acredita a secretária de Estado.
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Saldanha, Lisboa |
What can I do?
The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it. (Jean Baudrillard)
Silk Road
O Regime de Abril
É verdade: essa pessoa nasceu num meio incomparavelmente mais rico do que o meio em que eu nasci. Mas eu nasci num meio em que a melhoria constante, a abertura permanente de novas possibilidades, o enriquecimento ano após ano eram a regra. O jovem que nasceu em 2002 nasceu num meio em que a crise, a ameaça e o impasse são a normalidade. Acreditem: o socialismo não foi uma boa ideia. Valia a pena tentarmos outra coisa.
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Evolução do PIB por habitante – Portugal |
Driving Homogeneity Through Diversity
The mood in Jakarta was jittery in the days leading up to its gubernatorial election on April 2017. Islamist agitators accused the incumbent governor, Ahok, who is both Christian and of Chinese ancestry, of “Christianising” Jakarta because a mosque built by the city government resembles a cross. Anxious ethnic-Chinese, in turn, shared posts warning that the election of Ahok’s rival would lead to the forcible imposition of Islamic law. However, the election passed off peacefully. Unofficial counts showed Mr Baswedan easily beat Ahok with around 58% of the vote. Ahok would have been the first Chinese Christian to win the job in an election. In the end, however, a row about religion upended his campaign.
Mr Baswedan spoke at the headquarters of the Islam Defenders Front and later joined its leader, Rizieq Shihab, for prayers before a big anti-Ahok rally. In the wake of his victory, Mr Baswedan made all the right noises, pledging to defend diversity. But he celebrated in the company of Mr Shihab, once again. Marcus Mietzner of the Australian National University worries that “it demonstrates that militant Islamists have become more organised, established better connections with elite networks, and have found ways of building alliances with mainstream politicians.” Mr Baswedan is not about to impose Islamic law in Jakarta. But hardline forces certainly helped him win. That genie is not easily returned to the bottle.
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London |
Love
Quadro de Almada Negreiros
O Busílis
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Nice, 2016 |
Cut and Paste Engineering
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Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, Meditazione |
The Cuckoo’s Nest
Ability
Canada has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources, and also has been very fortunate to have people with the ability to convert these resources from potential assets into useful products at a price others are willing to pay.
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Bird’s Eye View of the City of Omaha Nebraska, 1868 |
Stoic
Preservar
Let’s Show Them!
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My Stealthy Freedom |
Oh Infrastructure
Lost
Whataboutism
It is not a bad tactic. Every criticism needs to be put in a historical and geographical context. A country that has solved most of its horrible problems deserves praise, not to be lambasted for those that remain.
By Design
Orgulho na Raça
The Forgotten Man
The Worker Performer
Pale Males
On Top
Trying To Paralyse Us With Bad Conscience
In lengthy Facebook posts, Patrik Schumacher has railed against everything from state-funded art schools (“an indefensible anachronism”) to the PC takeover of architecture (“trying to paralyse us with bad conscience”). Raging against the “social engineering” of housing design guides and the “intellectually bankrupt” idea of land use plans, he set out his Urban Policy Manifesto, which rambled from scrapping housing space standards to abolishing all forms of rent control and tenancy regulation. “City-center locations should be used to house “the most economically potent and most productive users who serve us most effectively. It’s about loosening the reins and rolling back the nanny state,” he says. In his mind, only entrepreneurs can discover and invent the “co-locational synergies” of the city, while urban vitality cannot be determined by “faceless bureaucrats” in planning offices.
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Tsutomu Nihei |
Clueless
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Angela Merkel |
Trumped
Equilibrium
And because Black nationalists are not alone... In the wake of Trump’s surprising election victory, hundreds of white nationalists converged on the capital to herald a moment of political ascendance that many had thought to be far away. Intellectual leaders of the movement argue that they are trying to realize their desire for a white “ethno-state” where they can be left alone.
Os Especialistas
A História da 1002ª Noite
Is our World a simulation?
Nano Apocalypse
Linha de Cascais vs Metro de Lisboa
(transcrito de portugalferroviario.net, trainmaniac)
Penso que é esta reflexão que é urgente ser feita. No Governo, na Assembleia da República mas também na AML e na sociedade civil, em geral. Mais importante do que pequenas realidades é a o panorama geral da mobilidade na Grande Lisboa. E nessa óptica é evidente que a urgência da linha de Cascais e da sua ligação à linha de Cintura ultrapassam, em pertinência social e económica, qualquer outro projeto que possa ser apresentado para o Metro de Lisboa. Que o bom senso impere, por uma vez.
Goodbye Europe!
These bonds of partiality are most pronounced in intimate relationships. They exist also in political communities. Over time, in the context of concern between generations and cooperation between families, villages, and towns, so communities develop cultures, which bind us together. They can do this only if there is a certain level of stability, stability regarding whom I live with and, usually, stability in where we live. Without some such culture, people living together are merely a collection of alienated individuals, living an impoverished life. The direction a culture takes is owned, though, by the community that sustains that form of life. This is true for native Americans; for aboriginal peoples in Australia; for tribes in Papua New Guinea and Peru. It is true, too, for the British.
Snowden

My Relationship
The Money That Never Was
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At this point there is $3.439 in the system. The bank has $271. |
When those Social Security thresholds were originally established in 1984, they were designed to include only a small number of higher-income taxpayers. But the thresholds weren’t indexed for inflation, and so over more than 30 years, the number of Americans affected by the provision has risen dramatically.
We have to distinguish between particular price movements (caused by demand and supply of particular commodities), movements corresponding to waves, and general price movements (caused by demand and supply of money), movements corresponding to tides.
About Altruism
Eu Sofro
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Charlottenburg Palace |
And when the population no longer wants it?
Like the mood in August 1914, that of 1933 represented the actual power base of the coming Führer state. There was a very widespread sense of release and liberation from democracy. What is a democracy to do when the majority of the population no longer wants it? There was a desire for something genuinely new: popular rule without parties, a popular leader figure. – Sebastian Haffner, 1987
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Pawel Kuczynski |
Erdogan and Putin represent an unusual view quite different from liberal democracy, far closer to the alternative form of authoritarian democracy. For them democracy is a form of government where the will of the popular majority is fully represented by an individual, to be implemented by that individual without regard for institutional or legal constraints. – Alexander Woolfson
Indoctrination
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Frequency of the word ‘Racism’ in New York Times articles, 1851-2016 |
Portugal e a Sua Paralisia
Se existem paraísos fiscais é porque existem infernos fiscais. E Portugal é um deles. (André Abrantes Amaral)
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IRS – Um Imposto Que Nunca Será Suficientemente Progressivo |
Modernity
O Caso do Camarada Tulaev
Ethno-Nationalism
When members of Chaml initially put forward their proposal to bring non-sectarian, non-violent education schemes to Lebanon’s public schools in 2015, they unwittingly crossed a red line with the Ministry of Education. Concepts of ‘secularism’ and ‘non-sectarianism’ are still deeply controversial and highly misunderstood terms in Lebanese society. The term ‘secularism’ is often interpreted by many Lebanese as an attack on their personal identity, as if the blanket has been pulled from beneath their feet with nothing to break the fall. Since 1926, the Lebanese Constitution has imposed a permanent confessional political model on the country, based on power sharing between various religious communities. Currently, Lebanon officially recognizes eighteen sects, which are each allowed to apply their own laws in certain matters.
This system has had a serious impact on education. Lebanese schools are free to approach religious education without oversight from the Ministry of Education, creating a learning environment heavily skewed in favor of the beliefs, traditions, and historical narratives of the local, dominant sect. There are, for example, at least seven different history textbooks in circulation in the Lebanese school system today. “So why do we continue to distinguish between Muslims or Christians or those from other sects? Why do we let these ideas in?” said Sandy Chaya, a sixteen-year-old from the village of Sawfar.
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A Perch of Birds, Hector Giacomelli |
Doping
Um Passado de Glória, um Futuro de Vitória!
Ruínas
Salário Mínimo Nacional
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Será o salário mínimo nacional um dos responsáveis pela desertificação do Interior? |
AmeriKKKa

Armenian Genocide
O Poder da Roupa
1º Campeão Português
Isto é para mim!
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Segurança Social, Lisboa |
Universidade XXI
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Campo Grande, Lisboa |
O Tricampeão Voltou!
Não existem Startups em Portugal
Mein Kampf
O Império e As Províncias
Metropolis-first Arrangement

The Least Action
It Just Is
No doubt some who deserved to be asked were overlooked, and some who did not were invited by mistake; for that is the way of things, however careful those who arrange such matters may try to be. (J. R. R. Tolkien)
Tropical Chancer
Either Way, We Are Screwed
Bridge
‘Destroy All Carbon-based Life Forms!’ would be a very bad algorithm for autonomous killbots. (arstechnica)
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Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 1: Vader |
Made In Amadora
O que parece ser apenas mais uma garagem é na verdade a porta de entrada da fábrica da Dr. Bayard, a marca que há várias gerações é a receita de bolso de muitos portugueses para acabar com a tosse. Quem dá as boas vindas, aliás, é a única pessoa que parece sofrer da garganta nas imediações: o homem desenhado nas embalagens de rebuçados da marca, em tons de azul, branco e vermelho, e que está ampliado e emoldurado à entrada, por cima dos cacifos dos trabalhadores. [Observador]
Pérolas do Centralismo Lisboeta
O estudo esclarece que o arco metropolitano polarizado pela capital tem um forte poder para competir e para atrair investimento. O retrato da nova região feito pelos números, impressiona: 4,1 milhões de habitantes; 42,2% da população com menos de 15 anos do país; 49% da população portuguesa com o ensino superior; 42,5% da população empregada, 44% das exportações. Para lá destas dinâmicas, a região dispõe ainda do principal aeroporto nacional, a Portela, e o porto de Sines, a maior equipamento para o tráfego marítimo do país. Lisboa, isoladamente ou colada à sua área metropolitana, é a cabeça e a coluna vertebral da região, mas, se funcionasse isoladamente, a sua capacidade de competir seria muito menor. O que faz a diferença é que a capital é a base de “região urbana funcional” que se estende pelo Oeste, pelo vale do Tejo, pelo eixo rodoviário até Évora e pelo Alentejo Litoral. Neste conceito, conta menos a geografia do que as relações entre as pessoas ou as empresas.
O estudo fez-se com o empenho da Câmara de Lisboa, que agora parte à procura de meios e de parceiros para responder às suas orientações. [Público]
Why Merkel?
The Other Men
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Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman |
Do Something
“Guys make more money because their movies make more money… It makes sense. Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, do something. Go write something, go do something. But that subject is just so prevalently everywhere right now, and it’s boring.” – Kristen Stewart
Melancolia
Se o estado de espírito que a causava era triste, não deixava por isso de ser doce. (Sheridan Le Fanu)
Animals
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Hans Landa |
Quo vadis Europa?
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Queen Joanna the Mad (1877) |
Robin das Artes
Metamorfose
Amadora
Books
The Past, The Future
Amadora, Escola de Campeões
Meaning and Happiness
The Most Elegant
Deep Inside
Life is Too Short
“If youngsters are being deterred from starting their own businesses then they are hardly to be blamed. Who wants to have to spend most of their time, effort and intellectual energy steering a path through a vast forest of regulations, directives and laws only to watch the taxman take a big, wet, juicy bite out of the little profit you have managed to earn. And, to top it all off, you then switch on the TV or open the morning newspaper only to be told that you are ‘the enemy of the people’. Contrast this with going for a job in the public sector which will give you a guaranteed income, a job for life and the steadfast loyalty and service of the political classes. It’s a no-brainer. Life is too short.”
Fake News
Amar
Eurasia
O que nos separa
First World Problems
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Anton Kannemeyer |
Secretário de Estado da Cultura de Lisboa
- Acabar a fachada poente do Palácio da Ajuda por 4,4 milhões de euros e organizar a criação de um museu que apresente as joias da coroa em permanência;
- Inaugurar a ampliação do Museu do Chiado;
- Criar o programa de dinamização do Eixo Belém-Ajuda.
- Era ideal terem sido afetadas verbas para a expropriação do conjunto do casario à volta do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga;
- Melhorar a situação do Museu do Azulejo e que corresponde também a uma zona da cidade de Lisboa que precisa de outro tipo de política de organização urbana;
- A conclusão do Pavilhão de Portugal, a grande obra pública de Siza Vieira em Lisboa.
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Almada Negreiros |
Eu percebo a confusão de Barreto Xavier. Em Portugal, o Tribunal Constitucional fica em Lisboa. Na Holanda, não fica em Amesterdão. Fica em Haia. Em Portugal, o Supremo Tribunal está em Lisboa. Na Alemanha, não está em Berlim, está em Karlsruhe. Já o Tribunal de Contas, em Portugal, está sediado em Lisboa. Na Alemanha, a sede do Tribunal de Contas não é em Berlim, é em Bona. Consegue adivinhar onde está a Autoridade da Concorrência, em Portugal? Na Avenida de Berna, Lisboa. Na República Checa não está em Praga, mas sim em Brno. E a ANACOM — Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações? Se estiver em Portugal, vai encontrá-la em Lisboa. Se estiver em Itália, não é em Roma. Terá de ir a Nápoles. E a ERC, Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social, que em Portugal é presidida por Carlos Magno? Aposto que consegue adivinhar, fica em Lisboa. Na Holanda fica em Hilversum, que não é a capital. Voltemos a Malta, a Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados fica em Sliema e não na capital. Já em Portugal, necessariamente, fica em Lisboa. Em Portugal, a ASAE — Autoridade para a Segurança Alimentar e Económica tem a base das suas operações em Lisboa. Viajemos agora para Norte, até à Suécia, onde encontramos a congénere da ASAE em Uppsala e não na bela cidade de Estocolmo. Também no Norte, desta vez na Finlândia, descobrimos que a sede do Infarmed lá do sítio não fica em Helsínquia, a capital, mas sim em Kuopio, que nem sei pronunciar. Em Portugal fica em… (consegue adivinhar?!) Lisboa. O Turismo de Portugal, que podia perfeitamente estar no Algarve, está em Lisboa, tal como o IDN – Instituto da Defesa Nacional. Se olhar para o lado cultural, encontra o mesmo panorama. Por exemplo, a Biblioteca Nacional fica em Lisboa. A Companhia Nacional de Bailado também. Se olhar para a ciência vai encontrar a principal entidade portuguesa, FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, em Lisboa. Mas, por exemplo, na Alemanha não a vai encontrar em Berlim, vai ter de procurar melhor e ir a Bona.
E em 2016, continuo a perceber a confusão de Barreto Xavier. São muitos os Museus que pode visitar no primeiro domingo de cada mês, sem ter de pagar bilhete! De norte a sul, há Museus para todos os gostos e idades. Museus gratuitos pagos pelo Estado no município de Lisboa: 17; no resto de Portugal: 9.
Play With Me
The US Air Force has introduced a plan to create a drone-specific program for new officers which will eventually produce between 190 and 300 new “Remotely Piloted Aircraft” (RPA) pilots per year. Already about 1,200 drone pilots work from an Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

Papoilas Saltitantes
Zentrum
Vice is ever most dangerous when lurking behind the Mask of Virtue.
Matthew Lewis
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Weimar Germany – 1930 |
Family
German Construction, Destruction and Reconstruction
A Nossa Terra
Oscar Wilde
Buy The Parthenon
For the last few years, amidst her financial crisis, Greece has flirted with the idea of selling off state historical assets. The UK should ease Greece’s debt problem and buy (the rest of) the Parthenon. Britain could offer an enormous (many-billion-pound) cash payment, along with an even larger, very-low interest loan, for which the British government could surely get extensive private sponsorship.
[Joshua Gelernter (2015), Standpoint]
Camouflage
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Mads Mikkelsen‘s work of art: Hannibal |
O Glorioso
Branca de Neve
You Think Political Correctness is a Game?
Particularidades
15 horas. 15 horas é sempre tarde ou cedo para aquilo que queremos fazer. Um momento do dia, bem particular.
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Jean-Paul Sartre |
E Nós Sabemos
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American Apartheid
Hidden Resources
O que corre mal na mobilidade de Lisboa?
O SATU de Oeiras foi inaugurado em junho de 2004 e pretendia ligar a estação ferroviária de Paço de Arcos (linha de Cascais) à estação ferroviária de Cacém (linha de Sintra). As duas primeiras fases, indissociáveis no projeto, levariam o SATU até ao parque empresarial do Lagoas Park, a terceira chegaria ao TagusPark e finalmente a quarta ao Cacém, já no concelho de Sintra. Mas a obra nunca passou do Centro Comercial Oeiras Parque, que fica a apenas 1.200 metros de Paço de Arcos.
Logo depois da inauguração da primeira fase, a Teixeira Duarte estaria disponível para investir os cerca de oito milhões de euros que faltavam para que o SATU chegasse ao Lagoas Park, mas isso nunca aconteceu porque a Câmara nunca conseguiu mobilizar os 13 milhões que correspondiam à sua parte. Paulo Vistas, o atual presidente da Câmara de Oeiras, desabafa: “Não avançou porque não houve vontade política para que aquele projeto pudesse candidatar-se aos fundos comunitários”.
Em 2009 chegou a haver um protocolo com a Câmara de Sintra para conseguir concretizar o resto da obra até ao Cacém, mas a parceria esfumou-se com a eleição de Basílio Horta do PS que diz ter “outras prioridades, nomeadamente sociais“. O argumento não colhe junto de Paulo Vistas. “Isto é que é social, o SATU. Estamos a falar de áreas com rendimentos médios mais baixos e no próprio Tagus Park e Lagoas Park há muita mão de obra indiferenciada, pessoal de limpeza, jardineiros, estudantes….”
O balde de água fria para a Câmara de Oeiras e para a empresa SATU chegou em 2014, quando o governo do PSD de Passos Coelho não deu luz verde para que o projeto se pudesse candidatar aos fundos comunitários. A última oportunidade para salvar o SATU poderá ser a eventual concessão da Linha de Cascais a operadores privados, que possam ter interesse em receber, também, por atacado, mesmo. E claro, que tenham interesse em expandir a linha além dos 1.200 metros atuais, para que esta tenha maior utilidade. |
Consciência
Ah, poder ser tu, sendo eu!
Ter a tua alegre inconsciência,
E a consciência disso!
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Fernando Pessoa |
Pop Science First Principle
In his book, Atkinson resists the technicalities and ditches the mathematics, following Stephen Hawking’s dictum that each equation halves the number of readers.
They Are Coming
Bad boys, bad boys
What’cha gonna do?
What’cha gonna do when they come for you?
Turiscidade
The Problem With Reality


London
Um Problema de Legitimidade
- A Constituição Portuguesa permite a criação de um partido fascista? Não.
- A Constituição Portuguesa permite a criação de um partido estalinista? Sim. O nº 4 do artigo 46 apenas proíbe a criação de partidos fascistas, não dando o mesmo tratamento aos partidos estalinistas.
Bourgeois Virtues
My Money, My Home
Robochef: The Anthropomorphic Argument
Portray
Submissão
Eurabia
Milagre das Rosas
- Complemento salarial anual para trabalhadores e famílias abaixo do limiar de pobreza – 350 milhões;
- Reforço da proteção social através do abono de família e pré-Natal – 40 milhões;
- Facilitamento das condições de acesso ao RSI – 90 milhões;
- Reposição do CSI no valor anual de 5022 euros – 8 milhões;
- Eliminação da sobretaxa do IRS em dois anos – 430 milhões;
- Redução da TSU dos trabalhadores para 7% – 1050 milhões;
- Descida do IVA da restauração para 13% – 260 milhões;
- Fim de redução salarial na Função Pública – 306 milhões.
We Don’t Call It
You see, Willem, he admits he doesn’t know the law, and at the same time claims he’s innocent. (Franz Kafka (1925), The Trial)
Gerald: | Well? What do you think, Kyle? | |
Kyle: | Dad? Don’t you think our last new house is big enough? | |
Gerald: | Well, this one is BIGGER! | |
Kyle: | Tomorrow’s trial, Everyone vs. Everyone, is gonna make things a lot worse! We have to stop it! | |
Gerald: | Kyle, let me explain something to you. You see Kyle, we live in a liberal, democratic society; and democrats make laws; and these laws tell us what we can and can’t say; and what we can and can’t do. | |
Kyle: | Isn’t that fascism? | |
Gerald: | No, because we don’t call it fascism. Do you understand? | |
Kyle: | Do you? | |
Gerald: | Just look at how big this house is, Kyle. Just look at it. |
South Park – Season3 – Episode 6
Um Centro
Toda a civilização precisa de um centro.
Historical Romance
More Cosmetics Than Reality
Choose Your Side
2. The Wall Street Journal –A white police officer who shot a black man in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder Tuesday after law enforcement reviewed a video taken by a bystander.
3. The New York Times – A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.
4. The Orange County Register – Dramatic video that shows a white South Carolina police officer shooting a fleeing black man after a traffic stop has led authorities to file a murder charge against the officer amid public outrage over a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of law enforcement agents.
5. Los Angeles Times – A South Carolina police officer was charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man after authorities obtained a video that showed him unleash a volley of gunfire while the victim ran away, officials said.
6. San Jose Mercury News – Dramatic video that shows a white South Carolina police officer shooting a fleeing black man after a traffic stop has led authorities to file a murder charge against the officer amid public outrage over a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of law enforcement agents.
7. New York Post – A white South Carolina cop was charged with murder Tuesday after a shocking video showed him shooting a black man in the back as the unarmed victim ran from him, authorities said.
8. Daily News – A white cop in South Carolina was charged with murder on Tuesday, hours after a cell phone video revealed he shot a fleeing black man in the back during a routine traffic stop, contradicting an account he gave of the Saturday shooting.
9. Newsday – Dramatic video that shows a white South Carolina police officer shooting a fleeing black man after a traffic stop has led authorities to file a murder charge against the officer amid public outrage over a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of law enforcement agents.
10. The Washington Post – A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder Tuesday after shooting and killing a black man following a routine traffic stop over the weekend.
Our World. Our Rules.
Apenas Interpreto
Eu só interpreto sonhos. Não sei transformá-los em realidade. Por isso tenho que viver do que minhas filhas me dão. (Paulo Coelho)
Partido Empresa, Cidadão Consumidor
O Funil
Sempre pensei na vida como se fosse um funil. As pessoas começam nas bordas do funil, têm imensas possibilidades e depois, à medida que envelhecem, o círculo é cada vez mais pequeno, até que saem pelo cano fora… As possibilidades estão todas lá, ao princípio. Mas a vida é mesmo uma diminuição das possibilidades. As pessoas têm sempre de escolher e quando escolhem, perdem sempre alguma coisa.
Vasco Pulido Valente
Fahrenheit 451
[Quotes]
More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.
If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of “facts” they feel stuffed, but absolutely “brilliant” with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.
The folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself as an oracle, is inborn in us, Mr Valéry once said.