A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.” Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).
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Because it was written during active wartime, the book includes various suggestions for causing physical violence and destruction, such as starting fires, flooding warehouses, breaking tools, etc. But it also includes many suggestions for how to just generally be annoying within a bureaucracy or office setting. Simple sabotage ideas include: “Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.” “Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments.” “Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.” “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.” “‘Misunderstand’ orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.” “In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.” “To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.” “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.” “Multiply paperwork in plausible ways.” “Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.” “Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job” “Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.” “Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.” The guide also suggests “general devices for lowering morale and creating confusion,” which include “Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police,” “act stupid,” “Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble,” “Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe,” “Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.”
29 January 2025
the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels, noticing patterns, making connections, contemplating
“If it is important enough, you will find a way. Otherwise, you’ll find an excuse.”
— Unknown
So, studying history and having role models while pursuing a just society is actually really important?
Looking more like a checklist these days. I want off this ride. 😭
Microsoft is contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
Google is contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
Meta is contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
Amazon is contributing a similar amount of $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that he would contribute $1 million individually
Apple CEO will do the same as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and contribute $1 million to President Donald Trump's inauguration fund.
All for the sake of advancing Artificial Intelligence's rapid acceleration to become a global power.
“ dopamine detox ,, and why you should delete all your social media right now
"just five more minutes" and then you end up scrolling on instagram or tiktok for hours. i know that feeling. even if you know rationally that focusing on the really important things ( such as studying, working, learning from books or whatever ) is much healthier for you and your future, you can't help it.
you know that start studying for the exam you have next week will benefit you much more in the long run, but you still prefer watching tiktoks and scrolling on instagram. you could say that is pretty obvious: one activity is easy, and doesn't require much effort, whereas the other one is difficult and implies that you are focused.
but it's actually like this? so then why some people manage to be consistent in studying, or working, or exercising? they simply just have more motivation than you? and how can you start having the same motivation as them?
to answer this question, we have to take a look to a very important molecule produced by our brain: dopamine.
dopamine is often considered a pleasure molecule, but it's a false belief. dopamine is actually the molecule that makes us desire things, and it's that desire that gives us the motivation to complete every kind of task. for example, your brain doesn't release dopamine while you're eating a cheesburger, it releases it while you're going to mcdonald's to buy it, because you anticipate that the food will make you feel good, even if it actually makes you feel worse.
to your brain, it doesn't matter if the high-dopamine-activity is damaging to you.
your brain organizes priorities based off how much dopamine is expecting to get:
if an activity releases too little dopamine, you won't have the motivation to accomplish it.
if an activity releases a lot of dopamine you'll be motivated to do it, and repeat it over and over
so, which activities releases dopamine? basically, any activity where you can get an immediate potential reward releases an high amount of dopamine. but if you know that there's not an immediate reward invoved ( such as in studying, where the reward is in the long run ) your brain will not expect to release much of it and you'll be less motivated to do that task.
nearly everything releases some amount of dopamine, even drinking water when you're thirsty, but the highest amount of it is released when you're getting a reward randomly, for example while playing on a slot machine. even if you loose money, you eventually expect to get a bigger reward.
therefore it is not so surprising that the most additive social networks ( tiktok, instagram, pinterest ) are designed as slot machines. you don't know what the next post or video will be, but you expect something great, so your brain releases a large amount of dopamine.
in today's society our brains are overloaded with stimuli that induce an unnatural production of dopamine ( scrolling on social media, playing video games, watching internet pornograhy, etc. ).
it's frightening that people don't know how harmful this lifestyle is: our bodies have a biological sistem called homeostasis, which means that our bodies keep the internal physical and chemical conditions at a balanced level, whenever an imbalance occurs, our bodies adapt to it, for example, when it's very hot our body temperature rises and we start sweating to cool down.
but homeostasis manifests through tolerance too. for example, someone who hardly ever drinks alchool will be tipsy after one beer, on the other hand, someone who drinks alchool on a regular basis will need two, three, four beers in order to get drunk, because their body has developed a tolerance to it. it's not much different with dopamine.
so if you get used to large amounts of dopamine, you won't be able to do the things that you did before, because they don't produce as much dopamine and it's more difficult to motivate yourself to do them. once your dopamine tolerance gets too high, you are no longer able to enjoy low dopamine activities.
as if you were a drug addict, there's only one way to get out of it: you have to perform a dopamine detox. you have to avoid all high dopamine activities in order to allow your body to adjust to a normal level of dopamine production and start finding motivation again in the things that improve your personal growth.
it's not easy, you will be nervous and frustrated, maybe you won't make it through a full day without social media, but day by day it will get better and better, and eventually you'll be able to appreciate small things again.
imagine that you're eating your favorite food - for example, chocolate cake - every single day. after a while, chocolate cake doesn't taste good as before, even if it's literally the same cake. on the other hand, if you eat it once a month, it will taste great, because it's not something you've gotten used to.
this is exactly what dopamine detox does. be safe guys, and start recovering now.
[ source: https://youtu.be/9QiE-M1LrZk ]
"This International Women’s Day we call on all who identify as feminists to engage in the lifelong unlearning of their biases and to be in solidarity with Palestinian women, Sudanese women, Congolese women who are experiencing an ongoing genocide." from The Slow Factory, 08/Mar/2024: caption cont. under images.
In Palestine, more than 9,000 women have been brutally killed by the Israeli Occupation. 63 women killed per day.
In Sudan, 4 million Sudanese women & girls are at risk of sexual violence.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 1 million women have been survivors of sexual violence.
In Turtle Island aka the so called USA, 94% of fatal violence committed again Trans people are committed against Trans women.
This isn’t about the stats, the poverty porn or the constant shock doctrine the West desperately needs in order to be inclusive. This is a call for solidarity and collective action.
Access to feminine hygiene products, bodily autonomy and the access to necessary safe and caring spaces as women are all human rights.