#Minipax 1

[rastronomicals]

6:04 PM EDT May 20, 2024:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax 1" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist

--

[sluttish-armchair]

The more I try to adapt this thing, the more I realize how weird the environment is.

Yes, Orwell was ahead of his time; but from a post-eighties, modern viewpoint, the technology in 1984 is ridiculously inconsistent.

For instance:

Minitrue workers have text-to-speech capabilities; but they have to send physical messages to each other through pneumatic tubes (which, as I’ve previously stated, is a stupidly complicated mess) in order to use said text-to-speech.

And why the actual f*ck is Winston dialing back numbers for newspapers into a telescreen??? I thought instructions were given using the pneumatic cylinder tube??? If this is some kind of canned internet/communication system, then why don’t they just use the telescreens to transmit the papers and directions to each other? It would be so much more efficient!

However, in the context of the novel, these nightmarish organization methods work, for three reasons:

1.) The Inner Party wants the working classes to suffer.

I’m suffering just reading about it; poor Winston!

2.) The Inner Party wants there to be no chance of ”outdated information” coming back.

Paper can be destroyed forever, easily; digital records, on the other hand, are far more complicated. Things that were once deleted can be recovered using certain programs (which —judging by the technology the Inner Party uses — they definitely have created).

Certain computer glitches may also make it so that something cannot be deleted no matter how hard one tries (I’ve had apps that have done this in the past); which would be a risk as well.

3.) The Inner Party wants to keep the working classes as handicapped as possible.

By not granting them any kind of internet access (other than the back numbers), the Inner Party makes it more difficult for anyone else to learn how to access or use their technology. It also makes the records system impossible to hack or attack; so no one can use it for their own agenda or hold it for ransom.

So, the only possible way to get the Inner Party to release any part of its grip would be to physically take over one of the ministries (particularly, MiniLuv or MiniPax); which would be impossible to accomplish because of the guards’ weapons. But, theoretically, if it were possible to get into MiniLuv or MiniPax, none of the Outer Party members (or the Proles) would know how to use the computers inside; because they’ve never used any kind of computer before.

This would delay or prevent anything they might do to uncover records, deactivate systems, or learn how certain devices work (like the weird mind-reading/dream-invading(?) thing that is alluded to); thereby giving the Inner Party a better chance of rising up again.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

[xplainthexmen]

In which we take a substantial detour; Minipax is no Raul Julia; Corsair tries (and fails) to retire; everything is cooler in space; vengeance is more of a vocation than a career; the Starjammers win an intergalactic war with a slide show; and we pitch some television.

X-PLAINED:

Mister Sinister’s X-Gene

A detour

Space Cabbie

Starjammers #1-4

The Starjammers (more) (again)

Magneto vs. Magento

Several major galactic powers

Shi’ar religion

Sharra and K’ythri

The Uncreated (again)

Cephied variables

Standing Still

T’Cahr/Minipax

Ship names

Mustache fights

Collapsars

Corsair’s garden

Chaff mirror throwers

Several character developments which later will be ignored

A frustratingly pat resolution

Longshot vs. Domino

X-books and teams we’d like to see adapted for television

NEXT EPISODE: Sewer Knife Fight: The Sequel

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[vrtilkovic]

Spoken production/Reading: George Orwell, reading from 1984

I have read this amazing book in Czech, so I decided to read it in English as well. It is just amazing. The English used here is incredible! I like it sooo much.

Part    I.

Chapter 1

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

The link to the record:

[leafstem]

political party no.1

Its based off 1984. It was also the first to be created. Its icon is the same as the one in 1984.

The Party

Political party in the system created by George and Archer. Authoritarian.

Roles

- Dictator- Archer, George

- Vice dictator- E

- Head of Intelligence dept.- George

- Head of technology dept.- gLiTcHy

- Head of Miniplenty- Frances

- Head of Minipax- Archer

- Head of Minitrue- George

- Head of Miniluv- George

- Being 'rational'- Archer

- Causing chaos- E, Frances

- Enforcing leftism- E

- Recruitment- E, George & Archer

Disclaimer: This entire thing is a joke in the system. We dont actually support this style of government irl. We dont even get power in the system from it.

I hate it when ...

fUcking political parties form in the system.

Theres currently 2 lmao.

I'll post their names and desc. later if i don't forget.

[rastronomicals]

11:30 AM EDT March 26, 2024:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax 1" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist

--

[rastronomicals]

12:52 PM EST December 15, 2023:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax 1" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist

[rastronomicals]

11:30 AM EDT April 17, 2020:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax 1" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist

[rastronomicals]

7:57 PM EST December 2, 2019:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax 1\" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last\.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist

[rastronomicals]

1:24 AM EDT April 28, 2022:

Hugh Hopper - "Minipax II" From the album 1984 (1973)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

The first solo album from the Soft Machine bassist