mutualistic relationship of belonging between humans and the rest of the ecology.

People aren’t puppets, and to pull a person is to create the conditions for rebellion.

In their report, Intelligence Tests and School Reorganization, Terman called for breaking classes into five tracks (gifted, bright, average, slow, and special—echoing the A–E soldier ranking) based on ability, so that America might get the most out of its children.

At New Almaden we can see the steps in the proletarianization dance: the alienation of indigenous and peasant populations from the land, the formal establishment of white racial rule, scientific management continually optimizing for maximum profits, looming soldiers. It all adds up to a laboring class with no legal way to reproduce their lives

only by understanding how we’re made use of can we start to distinguish our selves from our situations. How can you know what you want or feel or think—who you are—if you don’t know which way history’s marionette strings are tugging?

After all, the only way for Stanford to have height records for its incoming freshmen was to ask on the application, which the school did into the 1980s.

Settler colonialists seized and enclosed agricultural lands around the world, forcing peasant and indigenous communities into capitalist work, whether waged, enslaved, or (most prevalent) somewhere desperate in between.

What haunts are the kinds of large historical crimes that, once committed, can never truly be set right.

Capital hit California like a meteor, alien tendrils surging from the crash site.