Author Archive
HErro!
So, I have good news. Apparently, I possess hacking skills unlike anything you have ever heard of! Allow me to elaborate:
I have a mobile broadband internet connection. So i get my internet through a USB stick, and can use it anywhere. Alas, my connection also has a 10 Gb use limit, so if i go above this my speed gets severely limited, to the point where streaming and downloading is brought to a stop. I recently reached this point. What a nuisance!!
But fear not, because I devised a clever workaround! In a moment of uncanny wisdom, genious, and hacking skills unlike anything you have read about, I had an epiphany! And just as the thought popped into my head, I spent hours working on my brilliant hack.
Ladies and gentlemen, I unplugged my USB stick, and promptly reinserted it. And VOILA!
I am a genius!
Hey
Warning, this post is not suitable for minors, people with a weak heart, or people who use the :3 smiley extensively.
With the invention of the internet, the usage of the :3 smiley exploded. And why wouldn’t it? It’s a cute little kittenish smiley, right? Oh look how cute it is!
WELL, ARE YOU READY FOR THIS? HUH?
With this i bid you, keep using this smiley. Because it’s friggin hilarious for us who know the truth. 🙂
Vegard
I actually wrote this about a week ago, but this is the first time I’ve been able to upload it. So here it is, my take on classes and stuff. Enjoy.
In an article in the norwegian paper Dagbladet, it comes forward that 2 out of every 3 norwegian believes that there is a class divide in the norwegian society.
Now, that is much higher than I thought from my experience of the norwegian
It's true. We don't
society, where everyone seems to believe that inequalities are a thing of the past. However the article also shows another thing: pretty much everyone believes they are the “middleclass”. Not a worker, but not rich. Workers chose to definethemselves as middleclass to hide the fact that they are workers, dependant on their bosses and struggle to make ends meet. The rich define themselves as middleclass to hide the fact that they are rich. “It makes me cry that there is still poverty in Norway, but I would rather cry in my white jaguar”.
First of all, the entire idea of a middleclass is a fallacy. It comes from the idea that your class is defined purely by your standard of living. As in how you live, what you can afford etc. It is a trick and a lie, created by the ruling class to divide the rebellious worker class, and to make them at ease with society. Your class is not defined by what you earn, but your position in the hierarchy of the working place. A way of alienating the people from their position in society, so that they do not see the inequalities and suppression that they are being subjected to. Lenin defined classes as “a flock of people at the same place in the production process”. I disagree with a lot of Lenins work, but this is right on the money!
In truth, there are 2 classes. The capitalist class, and the working class. The capitalist class is the class which owns stuff. The people who own factories, and employ workers. Those who own peoples work, and can with the stroke of a pen ruin peoples lives by, for instance, outsourcing their factory to china, so that hundreds of people lose their only income.
This is you!
The vast majority of the people, are a part of the working class. The defining characteristic of the working class, is the lack of anything to sell. We do not own anything, and so we can not sell it. Thus we sell ourselves, we sell our workforce to a capitalist. It doesn’t matter if you earn a lot of money in your job, if you have 2 cars or a big house. If you have a boss, someone who oversees your work and in the end takes out profit on it, you are a part of the working class.
The problem, is the alienation I mentioned earlier. Todays consumer culture has left people willing to accept the state of the realm, to accept the bullshit that goes on in the world, because “after all, we’re doing alright”. Everyone, please accept this for truth: A heightened standard of living does not equal a heightened status in the class hierarchy, as long as you maintain the same place in the production!
Vegard
“Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… and you give them a piece of you. They don’t ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like “maybe we should just be friends” or “how very perceptive” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” –Neil Gaimon; The Sandman
The more I think about it, the more difficult this thing called life is—especially love. I’m a serial dater (meaning that I tend to have short, meaningless relationships for no reason than to have fun in search of that thing called love). More often than not, I mess up. But sometimes, especially this last time, I don’t understand what happens.
Love is difficult. I try my hardest to be happy, to have fun, to make a difference and I am crushed. What do I do? Try again.
Who knows, maybe this weekend I will meet my future husband and be happy forever. (You pessimists, don’t take this thought away from me.)
Always an optimist,
Elizabeth!
P.S. I only wrote this because I’m in a nostalgic mood and no one has posted anything in a long while. Though what I said really wasn’t that interesting, god I love that quote from Neil Gaimon.
P.S.S. Read Good Omens by Neil Gaimon. Good stuff. Or the Sandman comic book… also good stuff.
P.S.S.S. Damnit, Elaine posted something today 🙁 THIS REALLY WAS POINTLESS!
Hi again. Long entry today, sorry about that.
Society is all about money. The accumulation of wealth has become the driving force of the capitalist society, and everything else comes second. This is really not debatable, so I’m not going to spend much time on this specifically. What I want to talk about, is work.
First, I’m going to postulate that there are 2 kinds of people (in this context). People who need to work in order to survive, and people who survive on others work. The 
people who survive on the work of other people, are the owners. Those lucky few who own factories or stocks in companies, who get to sit on their asses and watch as their factories make money for them. Most people, however, need a job to survive. A job where you produce something, be it raw materials, finished goods or services. We get hired by a company of some sort, we get told what to do with the materials at hand, and we make stuff. We don’t have anything to sell but ourselves, so we sell our work to our bosses. This is where it gets interesting. Because no matter how hard you work, you get paid the same. Allow me to demonstrate.
Meet Bob. Bob works in a factory. In one week, Bob produces 100 items, which is sold by other branches of the company. These 100 items earn the company 1000 dollars. For his one week of work, Bob gets 500 dollars paid. The next week, Bob decides to give everything he’s got, and he manages to double his productivity! Wow, amazing! Well done, Bob, you just earned the company 2000 dollars instead. For this feat, you still get 500 dollars. The week after, Bob is demoralized, and only produces 50 items. The company only earns 500 dollars, and Bob still gets his 500 dollars pay.
My point here is that no matter how productive us workers are under capitalism, we get the same amount of money. As long as we produce enough to make the company survive, there really is no motivation for us to work as hard as we can. If Bob doubles his productivity, the only person who gains from it is his boss. So why should he?
My place of work recently won a cash prize because of an index. I work in a pizzashop which is part of a chain, which measures how much each branch earns in relation to what the workers earn. Basically, its an index of which branch pays the smallest part of their profit to their workers.
Marx talked about the exploitation of the workers. Capitalism can’t survive without profit, and the bosses, the owners of companies, won’t run their companies unless they earn a healthy profit. The exploitation of workers is a problem, because in the end the work we do doesn’t benefit society, it benefits our boss.
So why not turn it around? If all the factories, companies etc. that are today privately owned, are owned by the people in stead, the profit would benefit everyone. Thats the kind of world I would like to live in.
Vegard