The phrase “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” is found in Romans 12:19 and emphasizes that God, not humans, should handle matters of justice and retribution.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Biblical Context:The verse appears in Romans 12:19, where Paul is encouraging believers to not take revenge but to leave that to God.
Meaning:The phrase “vengeance is mine” signifies that God has the authority and power to punish wrongdoing and ensure justice.
Implication:It’s a call to trust in God’s justice and not to resort to personal vendettas or seeking retribution.
Other Verses:The phrase “Vengeance is Mine” also appears in Deuteronomy 32:35.
Deuteronomy 32:35,Romans 12:17-19 NKJV – Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; – Bible GatewayBible Gateway
Romans 12:19 – Bible GatewayRomans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I wi…Bible Gateway
Romans 12:19 – oremus Bible BrowserBeloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says t…oremus Bible Browser
New Thinking • Mar 17, 2025 Andrew Newberg, MD, is author or coauthor of Born To Believe, Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening, How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain, How God Changes Your Brain, Neurotheology, Principles of Neurotheology, The Metaphysical Mind, The Rabbi’s Brain, Why God Won’t Go Away, and Words Can Change Your Brain. In this interview, rebooted from 2019, he shares some history regarding the discipline of neurotheology and his own personal involvement. He emphasizes the principle of open-mindedness toward both materialistic and idealistic interpretations of spiritual experiences. In the meantime neuroscience can offer much new information regarding such factors as brain states during prayer or meditation, the influence of various entheogens, psychopathology and religion, and even interspecies communication. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on February 27, 2019)
Dr Russell Razzaque • Premiered Mar 13, 2025 • Ever wondered why Trump voters support him? In this video, a psychiatrist breaks down the psychology and motivations behind Trump voters’ decisions. Learn about the mindset and influences that shape their political choices and opinions. If you’re curious about political psychology, this video will give you new insights into voter behavior and why people support political figures like Trump.
The National initiative is a proposed process to petition an initiative at the federal level in the United States via a national vote on the national ballot measure. While some U.S. states allow direct or indirect initiatives, there are currently no national initiatives in the United States.
The process and system for a national initiative was proposed in the early 2000s by the late Mike Gravel, a former U.S. Senator, and the Democracy Foundation, a non-profitnon-governmental organization. The set of proposals, referred to by its proponents as the National Initiative for Democracy (and later renamed National Citizens Initiative for Democracy in 2012[1]), gathered endorsements from author, activist and former independent candidate for President of the United States Ralph Nader; linguist, philosopher, political activist and author Noam Chomsky; author of The Tao of Democracy and co-director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence Institute Tom Atlee; and socialist thought-leader and author of A People’s History of the United StatesHoward Zinn.
National Initiative for Democracy (USA)
The National Initiative for Democracy (NI4D) is a proposed constitutional amendment (Democracy Amendment) which recognizes the people’s right to make laws at the local, state and federal level of every jurisdiction in the country and a federal law (Democracy Act) which spells out orderly procedures for the people to develop and vote on laws.[citation needed]
“The National Initiative does not change or eliminate Congress, the President, or the Judicial Branch of government. Laws created by initiative must still stand up in the courts just like laws created by Congress.” The National Initiative adds an additional check—the people—to America’s system of checks and balances, while setting up a working partnership between the People and their elected representatives.[citation needed]
The framers of the National Initiative for Democracy believe the law-making branch of government (Congress) no longer effectively represents the will of the American people. They believe as America continues to grow and diversify, Congress can only become less and less effective in representing the masses; that the gap between the elite decision-making few and the ever diversifying average citizen can only be bridged through direct citizen participation in governing. They contend that while “voting out” representatives from office or enacting term limits is a good idea, those actions do not address the basic, fundamental flaw of governing an enormous, increasingly heterogeneous population by a tiny, elite few. They believe that recent technological advances have made it possible for all Americans to voice their opinions on policies and laws which affect their lives; technology that did not exist in 18th century America, when the Constitution was written.[citation needed]
The National Initiative for Democracy believes direct citizen participation in law-making is the sovereign right of all Americans and should no longer be the exclusive right of Congress (at the federal level). Since it does not seek to abolish Congress, the States’ Constitutional right to a representative form of government stated in Article I, Section 1, remains unaffected. The Supreme Court has recognized the Constitutional right of citizens to make laws at the state level but oddly, not at the federal. The National Initiative believes most of the existing state initiative processes have the right idea but are terribly flawed. NI4D designed their proposal to specifically address those shortcomings. Their proposal encompasses a unique, multi-step, deliberative process, by which citizens can initiate and enact laws. A process they believe has eliminated, to the further extent possible, the feared “mob rule” mentality.[citation needed]
By 2009, 24 US states had an initiative process in place at the state level. The proposed National Initiative would be somewhat similar to those already in place at the state level, but they would differ in the following significant ways:
An independent Electoral Trust would be established consisting of a Board of Trustees and a Director. The Board of Trustees shall consist of 53 members: one member elected by the citizens of each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Territories of the United States. The Director, except for the first Director, shall be appointed by majority vote of the Board of Trustees. The Board of Directors of the Democracy Foundation shall appoint the first Director. A variety of safeguards are written into the Democracy Act to prevent abuses by Trustees or the Director which include: Trustees and the Director serve a single term and cannot be re-elected; Trustees can be removed from office in a recall election or if three-fourths of the Trustees vote for removal; Trustees can recall the Director with a supermajority and all Electoral Trust meetings are open to the public.
The Electoral Trust would be responsible for establishing procedures and regulations to register eligible citizens for lifetime voter registration, to assist sponsors in preparing initiatives for qualification (drafting), to process initiatives, to distribute information on proposed initiatives to every registered voter via various media outlets, to administer initiative elections and to administer elections and recall elections of the Board of Trustees and the Director. The Director is acting CEO of the Electoral Trust and is responsible for its day-to-day management and operations, consistent with the policies established by the Board of Trustees.
Only citizens of the United States who are registered to vote may sponsor an initiative. The sponsor shall be identified on the initiative, on any petition, and on any qualifying poll. Any communication, regardless of the medium through which conveyed, that promotes or opposes an initiative shall conspicuously identify the person(s) responsible for that communication, in a manner specified by the Electoral Trust. Only U.S. citizens may contribute funds, services or property in support of or in opposition to an initiative. Financial disclosures and monetary thresholds will be established by the Electoral Trust. Contributions from corporations including, but not limited to, industry groups, labor unions, political parties, PACs, organized religions and associations are prohibited. Such entities are also prohibited from coercing or inducing employees, clients, customers, members, or any other associated person to support or oppose an initiative. Violations of the prohibitions shall constitute a felony. The initiative itself shall address one subject pertaining to public policy only, but may include related or mutually dependent parts. The initiative shall contain no more than five thousand words.
Before being put to a national vote, an initiative would need to qualify in one of 3 ways: a public opinion poll, a petition or legislative resolution. The Electoral Trust in the relevant jurisdictions will determine the number of yeas or signatures needed for qualification by polling and petition. A simple majority in the legislative body of the relevant jurisdiction is all that will be needed for qualification by legislative resolution. The sponsor may withdraw an initiative from further consideration and processing at any time prior to a deadline established by the Electoral Trust.
After an initiative qualifies, before it is voted on publicly, multiple hearings on the initiative will be conducted. A public hearing will be held with representatives of the sponsor and representatives of the legislative body of the relevant jurisdiction. Testimony on the initiative will be given by citizens, proponents, opponents, and experts which can be solicited. Their testimony shall be published as the Hearing Record. After the Public Hearing is completed, the Electoral Trust shall convene a Deliberative Committee (much like Oregon’s Citizens’ Initiative Review) [1] to review the initiative. The Committee shall consist of citizens selected at random from the voter registration rolls of the relevant jurisdiction maintained by the Electoral Trust and balanced as fairly as possible. Committee members are not required to participate (like jurors) and will be compensated for time spent and expenses incurred in performance of their duties should they choose to participate. The Deliberative Committee shall review the Hearing Record, secure expert advice, deliberate the merits of the initiative, and prepare a written report and recommendations. By two-thirds vote, the Committee may alter the initiative, provided that the changes are consistent with its stated purpose.
Each initiative, together with its Hearing Record and report of the Deliberative Committee, shall be transmitted to the legislative body of the relevant jurisdiction (local or state) or Congress (federal) for an advisory vote. Upon completion of the Legislative Advisory Vote, or 90 days after the initiative has been delivered to the legislative body, whichever comes first, the Electoral Trust shall publish a schedule for the election of the initiative.
The Electoral Trust will take advantage of modern technologies in developing procedures for voting and validating those votes. Voters may use multiple modern technologies from anywhere in the world using the most sophisticated encryption and security protections available that day. The Electoral Trust shall establish and maintain a web site for each qualified initiative that will contain, at a minimum, a summary of the Hearing Record, the report of the Deliberative Committee, the result of the Legislative Advisory Vote, statements prepared by the sponsor, other proponents and opponents, and a balanced analysis of the pros and cons of the initiative, its social, environmental, and economic implications, costs and benefits. Voters can use this information to make informed decisions before they cast their votes.
An initiative that modifies the Constitution or a charter would be enacted by affirmative vote of more than half the registered voters of the relevant jurisdiction in each of two successive elections. If such initiative is approved in the first election, the second election shall occur no earlier than six months and no later than a year after the first election. Half of the electorate, not merely half the people who care to vote, must vote yes, twice, in order to change a constitution or a charter.
An initiative that enacts, modifies or repeals statute law assumes the force of law when approved by more than half the voters in the relevant jurisdiction participating in an election. This means that in the case of statutes, the majority of the votes received will be counted as the favorable opinion (as opposed to modifying the Constitution, which will require more than 50% of all registered voters).
Background
The Democracy Foundation and the Philadelphia II Corporation are non-profit organizations established by former United States Senator Mike Gravel (Democratic Party, Alaska, 1969–1981). These organizations were established in conjunction to promote direct democracy through the enactment of a Constitutional amendment and a related Federal statute. If enacted, the amendment would both assert and codify the people’s right to make laws, and outline the structure of the Electoral Trust. The “Democracy Act” or federal statute would outline the details with which the constitutional amendment would be implemented.[citation needed]
The Democracy Foundation is the sponsor of the Democracy Amendment and the Democracy Act. It is also responsible for fundraising and educational efforts. The Philadelphia II Corporation was established separately to administer the national vote the organization hopes to use to enact the proposed legislation through the method of ‘direct decree by the People’.[citation needed]
Direct decree The process of direct decree is the legal basis proposed by The Democracy Foundation with which it hopes to sustain its proposed enactments. Direct decree is premised with the fact that ‘people’s sovereignty‘ implemented the US political system by direct decree in the United States Constitution. It cites that document’s opening clause, “We the people” as evidence of the same premise. By proposed logical extension, having legally created the government of the United States the people may alter it at any time in similar fashion.
The concept of direct decree further posits that although the authority of the United States Congress is limited by the constitution, the authority of the people is inherently sovereign and above the authority of the state. By such a theory any measure voted upon and approved by the popular majority of the people is posited to be legally binding and authoritative over all other law. NI4D does not accept the long-held belief that the two ways spelled out in Article V of the U.S. constitution are the only ways in which the constitution can be amended. The argument for bypassing Article V is that Article V dictates the means which representatives can amend the constitution but does not expressly forbid amendment by the popular vote of the People in its wording. This notion is supported by constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar: “…Article V nowhere prevents the People themselves, acting apart from ordinary government, from exercising their legal right to alter or abolish government, via the proper legal procedures. Article V presupposes this background right of the People, and does nothing to interfere with it. It merely specifies how ordinary government can amend the constitution without recurring to the people themselves, the true and sovereign source of all lawful power.”[citation needed]
Summary of the proposal
The National Initiative for Democracy is a proposed Amendment to the US Constitution that recognizes the people’s right to make laws, and an accompanying Federal Law that spells out the procedures for the people to develop and vote on laws. This proposed law making is supplemental to those means existing and established through the institutions of representative government (i.e. Congress and the President).[2]
asserts the legislative powers of the people to make laws
allows the people to amend the constitution by holding two successive elections, more than six months but less than one year apart
legitimizes the national election conducted by Philadelphia II, a non-profit IRS 501 C (4) corporation, to enact the Democracy Amendment and the Democracy Act (see below),
creates The Electoral Trust to administer the procedures established by the Democracy Amendment and the Democracy Act,
outlaws the use of funds not from natural persons in initiative elections under this article, and
outlaws non-natural persons from sponsoring initiatives under this article.
The proposed Federal Statute:
sets out deliberative procedures to be used by citizens to create laws by initiative,
describes the responsibilities of The Electoral Trust to administer these procedures on behalf of the people,
appropriates the funds from The Treasury for The Electoral Trust, and
defines the threshold of affirmative votes needed to enact this legislation (see below).
This legislation considers itself to be enacted when it has received a number of affirmative votes greater than half the total number of votes cast in the presidential election occurring immediately prior to its certification. The United States Constitution (via Article VII) also self-enacted.
This is neither a government held nor a government sanctioned election. As of this writing, there is currently no official method laid out in the United States Constitution for the people to hold such an election. However, the authority for effecting such a constitutional reform is proposed to derive from:
The National Initiative for Democracy, primarily associated with Mike Gravel, seeks broad public support. Gravel founded The Democracy Foundation and the Philadelphia II corporation and played a significant role in drafting the Amendment and Act’s text. This draft was publicly reviewed at the Democracy Symposium in February 2002. The initiative’s aim to establish a national ballot initiative through popular vote is one among several efforts pursued by Gravel, including previous attempts to promote constitutional amendments during his tenure as a Senator. While it’s stated that former presidential candidate Ralph Nader supports the initiative, this assertion requires proper citation.[citation needed]
In popular culture
A proposal for a national initiative is featured as part of the plot in the 1977 film Billy Jack Goes to Washington, the fourth and last of the Billy Jack series. In the film, Billy Jack is appointed a United States Senator. Seeking to keep him out of the Senate on a day when a controversial energy bill is being voted on, another Senator suggests he meet with a grassroots group that day instead. The group is working to pass a national initiative and Billy Jack becomes convinced of their cause. Billy Jack ends up filibustering in the Senate giving a long speech supporting a national initiative.[citation needed]
Love makes all things right by aligning mortal events with the natural patterns of an intentional and creative universe. Love is my sanity. It does not lead me into unreasonable or immoderate behavior. It is the guidance system for wise and peaceful life.
The thinking of the world would lead me to believe that the ways of love are often ways of weakness, while the ways of fear are ways of strength. Never has a more insane perspective taken hold of the human mind. I shall not be lured into the thinking of darkness, but rather, I will cleave to love today,
Dear God, When the world would lay its lies upon me And tempt me to perceive without love May your angels guard my mind And keep me firmly in your light. Amen.
Bayard Rustin, a Native Son who died in 1987, is often a hidden figure in history. Like many Black gay men who historically played prominent roles in impacting racial justice and politics, Rustin’s existence and contributions remain anonymous for many. On his 113th heavenly birthday, we remember the Black queer icon and speak his name.
Bayard Rustin’s vision as a leader in civil rights, gay rights, socialism, and nonviolence was radically profound — he was also light years ahead of his time. Rustin was a good friend, co-conspirator, and civil rights collaborator of James Baldwin. Much of Rustin’s perspective and ideology propelled his friend, fellow-freedom fighter, and collaborator Dr. Martin Luther King to prominence and pronounced influence. Rustin and A. Philip Randolph were co-architects of the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom — where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Signs of Rustin’s influence on King and of King’s willingness to lean on Rustin were abundant,” wrote John D’Emilio in the Rustin biography Lost Prophet. “When SCLC convened late in September for its annual convention, Rustin’s language appeared throughout King’s address. ‘Citizens do not have the moral or political right to dream up or engage in fantastic gimmicks to arouse public attention. Demonstrations are tactics, not principles.’ King declared they had to look beyond public accommodations to jobs, housing, and quality education. ‘These areas require political action,’ he said.”
Rustin was a master strategist of social change who studied the workings of insurgent movements globally to better understand creating seismic shifts in altering institutional power and systemic policies. He wanted to shift the balance between white supremacy and racial justice, violence and cooperation, and wealth and poverty.
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912, Quaker beliefs influenced many of Rustin’s core principles. These principles included the belief that there is God in everyone, each human being is of unique worth, value all people equally, and place great reliance on conscience as the basis of morality.
Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty Images
Ironically, homophobia, respectability politics, and colonized American morality quieted Rustin’s existence and profound contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Black gay man living his life out loud and proud when society shunned homosexuality and considered it immoral. In the mid-20th Century, every state in America criminalized homosexual behavior — gay men could be arrested for touching hands in public, spending the night together, or making out in parked cars
In 1953, police officers arrested Rustin on “moral charges” for having sex with another man in a parked car in Pasadena, CA, where he spent nearly two months in jail. Political opponents weaponized his gayness to sabotage his career as an activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement suppressing his deserved visibility and recognition.
In February 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom posthumously pardoned Bayard Rustin for that 1953 conviction. “In California and across the country, many laws have been used as legal tools of oppression, and to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ people and communities and warn others what harm could await them for living authentically,” Newsom said in a written statement.
In the decades following his death, Rustin’s story and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement have started to receive more recognition. The play Civil Sex, which debuted in 1997, explored Rustin’s life as a Civil Rights activist. The Rustin documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin was released in 2003. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. Keiynan Lonsdale portrayed Rustin in an HBO Max docuseries called Equal in October 2020. And ColmanDomingo starred as him in the award-winning Netflix film Rustin, which was released in 2023.
Native Son recognizes Rustin as a maverick, an innovator, and a freedom fighter who lived his life authentically in service to the Black gay community, civil rights, and equity. His bold and brilliant ideologies and visions are still relevant today amid the current racial reckoning and civil rights erasure and the work of Darren Walker, Rashad Robinson, Alphonso David, Malcolm Kenyatta, Keith Boykin, Jonathan McCory to name a few, is evidence of his enduring influence. We stand on Bayard Rustin’s shoulders and honor his commitment and courage to creating change for us.
The dawn of the internet promised a more democratic and connected world. Tech philosopher Cory Doctorow returns us to this vision in his new novel, “Picks and Shovels.”
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – MAY 30: SpaceX founder Elon Musk jumps for joy at a gathering following NASA commercial crew astronauts Doug Hurley (L) and Bob Behnken blast off from historic Launch Complex 39A aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the crew Dragon capsule bound for the International Space Station. Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The rise of the internet and personal computing once inspired utopian visions of how technology could improve society. These days, that kind optimism is sorely lacking from the conversation. The internet has gone from a sprawling web of thousands of websites and subcultures to an increasingly homogenized and monopolized space dominated financially and politically by a handful of billionaires, whose reach now extends into the federal government. In his new novel, Picks and Shovels, author Cory Doctorow brings his readers back in time to the 1980s, the pioneering days of PCs and the internet—and the egalitarian visions of technology’s role in the future that proliferated decades ago. In a special discussion hosted by Red Emma’s Bookstore in Baltimore, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Doctorow dig into his new novel, and its place in the wider discussion on tech, inequality, and capitalism.
Production: Maximillian Alvarez Post-Production: David Hebden
TRANSCRIPT
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Corey Doctorow:
Baltimore, thank you very much. What a pleasure. To be in an anarchist bookstore. I grew up in a Marxist bookstore, print shops, which are a little staid. They don’t have as many comic books. It’s very nice to be in a bookstore, radical bookstore where the ethos is if I can’t read a cracking fantasy or I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. Well, and I want give you a chance to give us an overview of this book and talk about where it came from. But before we get there, a question I’ve been really wanting to ask you for a while, I couldn’t help but sort of be overwhelmed with emotion holding this book, thinking about what it means, thinking back to young Corey, the IT worker crawling around desks and in the early days of the internet, and how much writing meant to you throughout your entire life. And of course, as someone who interviews workers all day, it makes me think of all the great works of literature that are just unwritten and living in the tired brains and exploited bodies of working people all around us. And so it’s a real remarkable thing to be holding one of those works of literature in my hand. I wanted to ask just to start, as someone who’s written so many different kinds of works, nonfiction, fiction, science fiction, what fiction writing, what has it given you that other forms of writing?
Corey Doctorow:
Well, I think that there are all these issues that are sort of on the horizon. I’ve spent most of my life the last 23 years working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on these issues of tech policy that are really long way off before they’re urgent. But you can see on the horizon that things are going to be very bad if we don’t act now and when they’re that far off, everything seems very abstract and cold and it’s kind of hard to get your head around why you should be worked up about it. There’s stuff in the here and now you got to pay attention to, and this is broadly the problem of activism in the 21st century. This is the problem of climate activism. Eventually everyone believes in climate change, but if you believe in climate change because your house is on fire, it’s kind of too late and upregulating the salience of things that are a long way away, very technical, very abstract.
It’s hard to do with just argument and you don’t want to wait until people are in the midst of it if for no other reason, then the difference between denialism and nihilism is paper thin. If we spend a decade arguing about whether anyone should be caring about the crashing population of rhinoceros, eventually there’s just going to be one of them left. And you’re definitely going to agree that this is now a problem. But at that point you might say, well, why don’t we find out what he tastes like? Right? Because there’s only one left. So getting people to care about this stuff early on, it’s very hard. And one of the things that science fiction is really good at is interrogating not just what a gadget might do, but who it might do it for and who it might do it to. The difference between a thing in your car that warns you if you’re drifting out of your lane and a thing in your car that rats you out to your insurance company because you’re drifted out of your lane is not the technology, right? It’s the social arrangements that go around it. And we are at the tail end of 40 years of technocratic neoliberalism that is really grounded in Margaret Thatcher’s idea that there is no alternative, which is really a way of saying don’t try and think of alternatives. That there’s only one way. This could be someone came down off a mount with two stone tablets and said, Larry Sergei thou shalt start mining thine log files for actionable market intelligence.
These are not decisions that had to be made in one way, and they’re not decisions that we can’t unmake and remake in new ways. And one of the things that fiction does is let you explore a kind of emotional fly through of a virtual rendering of a better world or a worse one, both of which can inspire you to do more or to take action now to upregulate the salience of things that are a long way away.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So you’re saying fiction is the shortest distance between the fuck around and find out stages of history?
Corey Doctorow:
Well, look, you need both. You don’t want to just build castles in the sky. You need a grounded theoretical basis. And the other thing about science fiction that I think is amazing is it’s the literature where we welcome exposition and exposition gets a bum rap. They’re like, oh, exposition is always bad show don’t tell. The reason we like showing and not telling is because it’s fiction. Writing on the easy level showing intrinsically is dramatic in a way that telling is not so it’s much harder to make it interesting. But you get 6,000 words of Neil Stevenson explaining how to eat a bowl of Captain Crunch cereal in Komi Con. I would read 20,000 words of that. I would tune into a weekly radio broadcast about it. So good at exposition. And so science fiction can integrate some of that theory, but you also need the theory part. This is a radical bookstore. It has an amazing comic book section. It’s also got a lot of theory.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, let’s talk about picks and shovels. Tell us a bit about where this book specifically a Martin Inch novel came from and give us I guess a
Corey Doctorow:
Quick
Maximillian Alvarez:
Overview
Corey Doctorow:
Of it. So I write, when I’m anxious, it makes the world go away. I sort of disappear into the world of the mind. And so I’ve been doing a lot of writing during lockdown. I wrote nine books. I live in Southern California, so I spent all of lockdown in a hammock in my backyard writing. And one of them was this book, red Team Blues and Red Team Blues had a very weird conceit. I somehow came up with the idea of writing the final volume in a long running series without the tedious business of the series. And I thought there’d be a kind of exciting energy that kind of last day of summer camp, final episode, mash kind of feeling of getting to the finale of a long running series without having to do all that other work. And I didn’t know if it would work or not, but I sent it to my editor who’s a really lovely fellow, but not the world’s most reliable email correspondent.
And I hunkered down to spend a couple months doing other stuff waiting to hear from him. But the next morning there was an email in my inbox, just three lines, that was a fucking ride. Whoa. And he bought two more, which is great, except that Red Team Blues is the final adventure of a 67-year-old forensic accountant who spent 40 years in Silicon Valley unwinding every weird, terrible finance scam that tech bros could think of over the whole period of the PC revolution and beyond. And he has earned his retirement by the end of Red Team Blues, he gets called out for a one last job and now it’s time for him to sail off into the sunset. And I didn’t want to bring him out of retirement. I mean, there is some precedent, right? Conan Doyle gave us back, Sherlock Holmes brought him back over Ricken Bch Falls.
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But that was because Queen Victoria offered him a knighthood if he’d do it. And my editor at the time was a vice president of the McMillan company that carries a lot of power, but you don’t get to night people. So I decided I would tell the story out of order and that you don’t really lose any real dramatic tension if you know that there’s something that happens chronologically later, which means that the character must be alive. Broadly speaking, you know that about every mystery or crime thriller series that you read. But by telling it at a sequence, I get a bunch of plot stuff for free. I don’t have to worry about continuity because I’m not foreshadowing. I’m back shadowing, right? Anytime. Two things don’t line up, I can just interpose an intermediary event in which they’re resolved. It turns out that when you’re doing this, the more stuff you pull out of your ass and make up and then later on figure out how to work out the more of a premeditated motherfucker you seem to be and people get really impressed, it’s great.
It’s a great cheap writing trick. So this book Picks and Shovels, it’s Marty, he’s First Adventure. It starts with him as a classic MIT screw up. He’s in the computer science program in the early eighties and he is so busy programming computers that he’s flunking out of computer science. And so he ends up becoming a CPA, not because he’s particularly interested in accounting, but because the community college CPA program now has a lab full of Apple, two pluses, and he really wants to go play with those. So after getting his ticket, he and his genius hacker roommate moved to Silicon Valley at the height of the era of the weird PC because when PC started, they were weird. No one knew what they were for, who was supposed to sell ’em, who was supposed to buy ’em, how you were supposed to use them, what shape they were supposed to be.
I grew up in Ontario, as you heard, I’m a Canadian. We’re like serial killers. We’re everywhere. We look just like everyone else. And the Ministry of Education in Ontario had its own computer that booted three different operating systems, a logo prompt, and it was in a giant piece of injection molded plastic with a cassette drive and a huge track ball like a Centipede game at the arcade. It was a very weird pc. Marty Hench ends up working with some very weird PCs. There’s a weird PC company called Fidelity Computing. The setup sounds like a joke. It’s a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi who started a computer company. But the joke is it’s a pyramid scheme and they use parishioners to predate upon one another, extract money from each other and hook them into these computers that are meant to drain their wallets over long timescales because they’ve been gimmick so you can’t get your data off of them.
The printers have been Reese Sprocketed, so they’ve got slightly wider tractor feeds, so you have to buy special paper that costs five times as much. They’ve done the same thing with the floppy drives. And this is making the millions and three women who work for them have become so disenchanted that they’ve decided to repent of their sins and rescue all of the parishioners. They have sucked into this pyramid scheme with a rival computing company. So these three women, a nun who’s left her order and become a Marxist involved with liberation theology, queer, Orthodox women whose family’s kicked her out, and a Mormon woman who’s left the faith overall position to the Equal Rights Amendment starts a company called Computing Freedom, whose goal is to make interoperable components floppy drives that work with their floppies floppies that work with their floppy drives, printers that work with their paper, paper that works with their printer printers that you can plug into their computers, computers that you can plug into their printers, all of the things you need to escape the lock-in of these devices and see in computers the liberatory potential that I think so many people saw as opposed to the control and extraction potential that unfortunately so many people also saw.
And as Marty falls in with them, they discover that the kind of people who are not above making millions of dollars stealing from people who trust them because they’re faith leaders are also not above spectacular acts of violence to keep the Griff going. And so what starts as a commercial dispute becomes a shooting war. And that’s the book.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So like you said, there’s like there’s a punchline kind of set up where a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi walk into a bar and start a PC company. And I was thinking about that a lot when I was staring for a long while before I even got to the book at just the copyright page where it says this is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And I wanted to ask in the context of that disclaimer, where the question of faith and the exploitation of faith in this era, what it’s speaking to that is either a creation of your mind or a real situation that you’re addressing fictitiously.
Corey Doctorow:
So remember that the early 1980s were a revolutionary moment or maybe a counter-revolutionary moment. It’s the moment in which all of the things that we’re worried about today started. So it’s the first election that evangelicals came into the electorate in large numbers because Reagan brokered a deal with Jerry Falwell to get evangelicals into the Republican coalition. So this is the beginning of political activism among religion. It is also the moment at which pyramid schemes are taking off, especially within religions. I tell the story in the book, but there’s a company called Amway. Amway is one of the most toxic of the pyramid schemes we’ve ever had. It was started by Rich DeVos, who’s Betsy and his partner Jay Van Andel, who ran the US Chamber of Commerce and was the most powerful business lobbyist in the world. And ironically, Richard Nixon had had enough of their shit and was getting ready to shut them down through the Federal Trade Commission when he got fenestrated.
And Jerry Ford, who’d been their congressman, came in and ordered the FTC to lay off on them. And the FTC crafted a rule, the Amway rule that basically says so long as your pyramid scheme operates like Amway did, it’s legal. So anyone from your high school class who’s found you on Facebook and tried to sell you essential oils or tights, they’re just doing Amway for tights or essential oils. The Amway has become the template and the reason that Amway was so successful, is it married pyramid selling to religion and religion, especially religions that are high demand or that have a high degree of a demand for fertility where you’re expected to have large families. These are institutions that require a lot of social capital for the parishioners to survive, right? If you’re in a religion where you’re expected to have 10 kids and you’re also supposed to tithe 10% of your income to the church, you are really reliant on other people to help take care of your family and vice versa.
And so they live on social capital and a pyramid scheme is a way for weaponizing social capital, extracting it, vaporizing it, turning it into a small amount of one-time cash, and then moving that up to the top of the pyramid and leaving nothing behind. I just heard a really good interview on the Know Your Enemy podcast where they talked about how pyramid selling, it’s like the bizarre world version of union organizing because pyramid selling is organized around finding the charismatic leaders within a community who other people rely on teaching them how to have a structured conversation that brings other people into what they’re doing, except this is where it goes off the rails because a union organizing conversation is about building solidarity, whereas a pyramid selling conversation is about vaporizing it. And so this crossover of technology, which is always a fertile ground for ripping people off because things people don’t understand are easy to bamboozle them with. People think a pile of shit sufficiently large always has a pony underneath it.
This is a warm happy energised card, which promises healing, growth and enjoyment. We have emerged from the somewhat shadowy and mysterious realms of the Moon into the bright light of day now. Gone are the tests and trials set us by the demands of our own growth. It’s time to laugh and dance and celebrate.When the Sun shines, we find new ways of resolving problems, new perspectives and fresh viewpoints. We see things more clearly, and are able to objectively consider obstacles and difficulties. We have the energy we need to throw ourselves into life, and to dynamically deal with anything that we discover.On a day ruled by this card, let yourself be lit from within… allow your own inner Sun to shine out and greet the world. No matter what other cares and worries may weigh you down, on this day try to put them aside and simply revel in the glory of being alive. Today celebrate your victories, applaud your successes, and be proud of your achievements.We can often forget to feel joyous with ourselves, becoming buried under worries and stresses. But if we can, for a moment, step back and look only toward the positive we shall find ourselves more able to deal with things.
Affirmation: “My inner Sun shines bright, surrounding me with light (That rhymes!!).”
Pam Gregory • Mar 11, 2025 Pam talks about the second half of March and the Solar Eclipse in Aries on the 29th. What does this mean for you? You can download a free birthchart from my website www.pamgregory.com, then purchase this two-part tutorial video series that explains how to find these points in your chart and what it means for you: https://gumroad.com/l/FHjOZ.
David Hoffman Jul 26, 2023 In April 1971, John Kerry, a former Navy Lieutenant who had served in Vietnam, spoke on behalf of The Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. His testimony was part of the “Winter Soldier Investigation”, a media event sponsored by the VVAW intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by American forces and their allies in Vietnam. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was created by and for veterans, with the mission to give voice to the growing opposition among returning servicemen and women to the war in Vietnam. The VVAW staged protests, led awareness campaigns about the realities of the war, and lobbied for improved treatment of veterans. Kerry’s testimony was particularly impactful because he was articulate, a decorated war veteran and willing to speak frankly about the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. His remarks were critical of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies, particularly the expansion of the war into neighboring countries. Kerry famously asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” He also discussed war crimes allegedly committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam and argued that these were not isolated incidents but stemmed from overall U.S. policy. The reaction to Kerry’s testimony was mixed. Some lauded him for his courage in speaking out against the war and for bringing attention to the plight of Vietnam veterans. Others, particularly those who supported the war or the Nixon administration, saw his testimony as an act of betrayal or as unpatriotic. This controversy followed Kerry throughout his later political career, becoming a contentious issue during his 2004 presidential campaign. In Congress, the reaction was also mixed. While the anti-war senators on the committee welcomed Kerry’s testimony, others were less enthusiastic. Some saw the event as a publicity stunt, while others criticized the committee for allowing a group of what they viewed as disgruntled veterans to air unverified allegations about American conduct in the war. Kerry’s testimony and the activities of the VVAW helped to shift public opinion about the war and highlighted the need for the U.S. government to address the issues facing Vietnam veterans. It was a seminal moment in the history of the anti-war movement.
A recent visit to Teotihuacán — the ancient Mesoamerican city in present-day Mexico, built by earlier cultures around 600 BCE and later rediscovered by the Aztecs — left me wonder-smitten by the see-saw of our search for truth and our search for meaning, by a peculiar confluence of chemistry, culture, and chance that unrinds the layers of reality to put us face to face with the mystery at its core.
Situated at the foot of a dormant volcano, Teotihuacán stunned the Toltec settlers with the discovery of a lustrous black material partway between stone and glass, brittle yet hard, breathlessly beautiful. Soon, they were laboring in obsidian workshops by the thousands, making from it delicate beaded jewelry and deadly weapons, household tools and ritual figurines, mirrors and surgical instruments, which traveled along trade routes to become the pillar of the Toltec economy. Its abundance and versatility may be why they never arrived at metallurgy, but obsidian became as important to the development of their civilization as steel has been to ours.
It would also become the ouroboros of their civilization — the source of prosperity by which they would flourish for centuries and the ominous overlord by which they would perish.
Not a mineral but a volcanic glass made of igneous rock, obsidian forms as lava cools too rapidly for mineral crystals to nucleate. It is composed primarily of silicon dioxide, with trace amounts of various oxides — mostly aluminum, iron, potassium, sodium, and calcium — the ratio of which varies by the circumstances of each eruption, creating a particular chemical fingerprint, so that each piece of obsidian can now be traced to its original source using nuclear and X-ray analyses.
As if volcanic glass weren’t already miraculous enough, the discovery of a special kind of obsidian — iridescent, with a green-gold sheen — catapulted Teotihuacán to the status of an ancient metropolis. Rainbow obsidian soon became the most valuable kind of obsidian in Mesoamerica, attracting people from faraway lands in search of wealth, much as the Gold Rush changed the demographics of nineteenth-century North America.
Rainbow obsidian
With the discovery of this doubly dazzling obsidian, Teotihuacán became home to people from different cultures with no common language and no common rituals. And yet they lived together harmoniously in the fertile valley, sharing its riches — it is hard to fight while flourishing — until the eruption of a different volcano in present-day Ecuador induced regional climate change that sent entire ecosystems into a protracted draught and left Teotihuacán on the brink of famine. Suddenly, the bedrock of this composite society began fissuring along class lines as the nobles feasted and the starving laborers clashed over resources. A kind of civil war broke out, from which Teotihuacán never recovered. The survivors abandoned the city, but not before burning the dwellings of the ruling class to the ground. Only its pyramids — Toltec temples to the Sun and the Moon — stood intact by the time the Aztecs came upon it nearly a thousand years later and named it “City of the Gods.”
One of the geochemical wonders of this Earth, iridescent obsidian occurs when nanoparticles of magnetite — an iron oxide present in most obsidian — form a thin film that reflects light waves at the upper and lower boundaries of the material in such a way that they interfere with one another, magnifying the reflection at some wavelengths and diminishing it at others. This process, known as thin-film interference, is what produces the colorful luster of oil spills and soap bubbles.
Magnetite gave Teotihuacán its rare rainbow obsidian, but it also fomented the destruction of Mesoamerican civilization by the Spaniards. Humans discovered the property of magnetism through naturally magnetized pieces of rock containing magnetite, known as lodestones, which became the first magnetic compasses, revolutionizing navigation. Without magnetite, Columbus may have ended up another anonymous sailor shipwrecked on an anonymous shore.
A seeming triumph of human nature’s ingenuity, the invention of the compass turned out to be a mere refraction of nature’s own imagination: Magnetite crystals have been found in the upper beaks of homing pigeons and many migratory birds — a kind of built-in internal compass that allows them to orient by Earth’s magnetic fields in their staggering feats of navigation. (Small amounts of magnetite are also found in various regions of the human brain, including the hippocampus — the crucible of our autonoeic consciousness; my friend Lia is convinced that my homing-pigeon sense of direction, which overcompensates for the mediocrity of my other senses, is due to abnormal amounts of magnetite in my brain.)
A built-in compass explains why, for instance, bar-tailed godwits — some of the longest-distance migrants on Earth — can leave their nesting grounds in Alaska and head for their breeding grounds in New Zealand not along the continental arc of Asia and the rim of Australia, where they can easily orient by visual landmarks like mountains and cities, but over the open Pacific Ocean. Across the immense monotony of blue, where a mistake by even a fraction of a degree would take them to a wholly different destination, they have found their way year after year, eon after eon.
Geologist and geophysicist Joe Kirschvink discovered magnetite while studying honeybees and homing pigeons as a graduate student at Princeton University in the 1970s. The idea that some animals navigate by magnetism was not new. At the dawn of the century, the Belgian playwright and amateur apiarist Maurice Maeterlinck had observed that bees navigate by “senses and properties of matter wholly unknown to ourselves,” which he termed “magnetic intuition.” A generation before him, and a decade before Darwin staggered the world with his evolutionary theory, the Russian zoologist and explorer Alexander Theodor von Middendorff had speculated:
The amazing steadfastness of migratory birds — despite wind and weather, despite night and fog — may be due to the fact that the birds are constantly aware of the direction of the magnetic pole and therefore know exactly how to keep to their direction of migration.
To have located the basis of biomagnetism in magnetite seemed like a triumph of science over mystery. But in the decades since, as our instruments have become more sophisticated and our theories more testable, research has revealed the presence of a protein in the retinal cells of birds — cryptochrome — that may be making use of quantum entanglement to provide a whole other mechanism of magnetoreception. More knowledge has only unlatched more mystery: The total system may involve multiple build-in instruments interacting with multiple fundamental laws and forces. I think of Henry Beston, who wrote a century ago that “in a world older and more complete than ours,” other animals “move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.” I think of the difference between science and civilization: Science knows it is unfinished, a perennial process, whereas every civilization mistakes itself for the end point of progress.
Walking down Teotihuacán’s central promenade and watching the Sun pyramid gradually eclipse the volcano, the evolutionary triumph of my peripheral vision registers a flash of yellow. I turn to see a small bird aglow against the ruins, perched on a stone ledge above a man in a sombrero selling obsidian souvenirs. The warblers — godless, tradeless, needful only of sky and song — are among the most regular border-crossers between North and South America, their migratory routes stretching from Alaska to the Amazon. Older than the Toltecs, older than the sediment deposits that separated the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to bridge the Americas, older than our oldest myths, they have seen civilizations rise and crumble, and will one day see Hollywood overgrown with poppies and Manhattan returned to the sea. And when they fly over the ruins of the Sistine Chapel and Silicon Valley, they will be guided by the same mysterious forces that guided the first of their kind.
“From the basic biological perspective,” concluded a team of scientists studying the magnetic compass of warblers, “the perception of the magnetic field remains the only sense for which the sensory mechanism and its location still remain unknown.”
It is salutary for us to have regular reminders that we don’t understand many of nature’s mysteries because we don’t, and may never, understand ourselves; that all of our creative restlessness, everything of beauty and substance we have ever made — our temples and our theorems, the Moonlight Sonata and general relativity — has sprung from our confrontation with the mystery of which we are a part. The Toltecs and the Aztecs gave shape to the mystery in Quetzalcoatl — their feathered god of creation and knowledge — staring at me from the base of the pyramid with the stony serenity of the centuries, knowing everything and knowing nothing.
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The amazing steadfastness of migratory birds — despite wind and weather, despite night and fog — may be due to the fact that the birds are constantly aware of the direction of the magnetic pole and therefore know exactly how to keep to their direction of migration.
