Patchwork Vst

[Chanelle Glugla]

Acceptance of this goal, which I will not attempt to justify yet, butwhich I think Patchwork can achieve, is the difference between aconservative, i.e., a fellow who thinks he can beat melanoma with anemery board, and a full-bore reactionary such as myself. If you happento be wrong, you have leaped the rail of sanity. So it is incumbent onus to argue carefully.

The essential inspiration for Patchwork is the observation that theperiods in which human civilization has flowered are the periods inwhich it has been most politically divided. Ancient Greece, medievalItaly, Europe until 1914, China in theSpring andAutumn Period, and so on. Burckhardt onceobserved that Europe was safe so long as she was not unified, and nowthat she is we can see exactly what he meant.

So how, exactly, did all these Obamaniacs, thesewhiterpeople, these Burning Manregulars, these young, hip progressives, convince themselves that whenit comes to government, bigger is better? That in fact we need a worldgovernment, toot sweet? That international public opinion is all thatreally matters in the world, that America should lead the world, feedthe world, and be governed by the world?

So we can think of Patchwork as a new operating system for the world. Ofcourse, it does not have to be installed across the entire world,although it is certainly designed to scale. But, it is easier and muchmore prudent to start small. Innovations in sovereignty are dangerous.

To be a reactionary is not to say we must reinstall the exact politicalstructure of the fourteenth century tomorrow, although that would surelybe an improvement on what we have now. To be a reactionary is to borrowfreely across time as well as space, incorporating political designs andexperience from wherever and whenever. AsNick Szabo has observed, themost interesting, detailed and elegant European forms are found in theperiod we call feudal, and thus it is only natural that areactionary design for future government will have a somewhat feudalfeel.

In the future, the fact that once, you would probably be attacked if youwent into Central Park at night, will seem preposterous. The idea thatmillions of random people who were not even authorized to be in thecountry were wandering around, driving gigantic SUVs at triple-digitspeeds after ten or fifteen drinks, and murdering random musicians onmotorcycles, will seem as weird as the idea that a pride of wild lionswould march into Carnegie Hall mid-symphony, close off all exits, andsystematically slaughter the audience. Graffiti will be a matter for themuseums, as will gangs, of course. The streets will have no cars or veryfew, they will be safe, at night they will be bright and full of lively,happy people. Wine will be cheap, restaurants will be unregulated, andfine Eskimo marijuana will be sold at Dean & DeLuca. Etc., etc., etc.

The foreign, forgotten lesson we are extracting from Croly is not thatprogressivism is the cure for all ills, but that progressivism, theeternal poisonous chameleon, in its 1911 incarnation espoused the civicvalues of 1911. All the better to convince its innocent hosts that itwas anything but a lethal parasite. But we are very good at readingprogressive discourse, and when we read Croly we see the values of 1911,not the malignant expansion of the State that Croly was trying tojustify in the names of those values.

This entire problem can be described as one of security. Wepostulate some structure of authority for the Patchwork. It sounds good. If the above propaganda is not appealing to you, all I can say is thatwe have very different tastes and perspectives. But is the resultstable? If we set it up in some state, will it remain in that state? Stability and security are the same thing: if the structure of authoritychanges in any authorized way, it is not really changing at all.

Anything like a patchwork can merge into a single centralized state. Itcan degenerate into an asymmetric form in which one state dominates theothers. It can split into two factions which fight a civil war for theworld. Individual states can turn evil and try to turn others evil. Etc. History tells us that all kinds of awful stuff can happen, and probablywill.

Second, security and liberty do not conflict. Security alwayswins. As RobertPeel put it, the absence of crime and disorder is the test of publicsafety, and in anything like the modern state the risk of privateinfringement on private liberties far exceeds the risk of publicinfringement. No cop ever stole my bicycle. And this will be far moretrue in the Patchwork, in which realms actually compete for business onthe basis of customer service.

A joint-stock realm simply cannot have anything comparable to a weakmonarch of the classical era. Realms will certainly recruit theirexecutives from the same talent pool large companies now draw from. Howmany Fortune 500 CEOs today are regularly bullied and led by coalitionsof their nominal subordinates, as (for just one example) the Frenchmonarchy so often was? Zero is probably too easy an answer, but at leastan approximation.

With all due respect, dear reader, the probability that you have a soundunderstanding of the case for divine-right monarchy is approximately theprobability that a large white goat will fall out of my ass. This meansyou need to read the great English exponent of absolute government,Sir RobertFilmer, and his masterpiecePatriarcha.

A Patchwork realm, or any modern corporate sovereign, is no more boundby the laws it imposes on its residents than Linden Lab is bound by theterms-of-use policy it enforces in Second Life. (In fact, it is probablyless so bound, because a terms-of-use policy creates at least the vaguesuggestion of liability. Whereas suing a sovereign is yet another ofthese political solecisms.)

This is terrible, of course. But again, the mechanism we rely on toprevent it is no implausible deus ex machina, no Indian rope-trick fromthe age of Voltaire, but the sound engineering principle of the profitmotive. A realm that pulls this kind of crap cannot be trusted by anyoneever again. It is not even safe to visit. Tourism disappears. Thepotential real-estate bid from immigrants disappears. And, while yourresidents are indeed stuck, they are also remarkably sullen and displayno great interest in slaving for you. Which is a more valuable patch ofreal estate, today: South Korea, or North Korea? Yet before the war, theNorth was more industrialized and the South was more rural. Such are theprofits of converting an entire country into a giant Gulag.

The standard Patchwork remedy for this problem is thecryptographic chain of command. Ultimately, power over the realmtruly rests with the shareholders, because they use asecret sharing orsimilar cryptographic algorithm to maintain control over its root keys. Authority is then delegated to the board (if any), the CEO and otherofficers, and thence down into the military or other security forces. Atthe leaves of the tree are computerized weapons, which will not firewithout cryptographic authorization.

Here we face a slight predicament. There are quite a few peoplepresently in San Francisco who do not meet the second constraint, arepretty iffy on the first as well, and have no labor skills to speak of. What do we do with them? Sell their slums out from under them,obviously; demo everything, spray for roaches, rodents and pit bulls,smooth the rubble out with a bulldozer or two, and possibly a littleaerial bombing; erect new residential districts suitable for Russianoligarchs. Next question?

Anyone that follows me on Instagram may have noticed my obsession with patchwork clothing. This is probably the result of my weakness for good quality textiles, and feeling the urge to use up every. damn. piece.

Sewing pattern - I like to use something simple and basic with a relaxed fit. The Page Dress is a good start . I usually just follow the top half of a pattern and attach a gathered up rectangle as the skirt.

Once you've picked which fabrics you'll be using, make sure they're all pressed and flat. I'm going to assume everything has already been pre-washed from the initial projects these fabrics were used for. If not, shame on you and your family.

Seriously though - if your fabrics aren't pre-washed and you sew them altogether, they will experience different rates of shrinkage when you place the finished garment in the wash and create all kinds of crinkly, uneven nightmare seams.

Trim your fabric scraps into even rectangles and squares. Follow the grain, where possible. You will be left with some odd, little pieces, for which I'll be making a blog post later on how I like to use these up.

Get your chosen sewing pattern out. I've used a basic, self drafted top for this. The skirt will be a gathered rectangle and doesn't need a pattern. Most commercial pattern pieces have the front and back shown as half pieces to be cut on the fold. For this project, I find it helpful to have the full pattern piece to lay my fabric scraps over. It gives me a better idea of how it'll all come together.

Play around by laying your fabric pieces over one of the pattern pieces until you're happy with the array of shapes and colours. I prefer a mix of small, medium and large sized fabric pieces. It can take a while to get the right mix - the perfectionist within me likes to take time with this step.

Patchwork or "pieced work" is a form of needlework that involves sewing together pieces of fabric into a larger design. The larger design is usually based on repeating patterns built up with different fabric shapes (which can be different colors). These shapes are carefully measured and cut, basic geometric shapes making them easy to piece together.

Patchwork is often used to make quilts, but it can also be used to make rugs, bags, wall-hangings, warm jackets, cushion covers, skirts, waistcoats and other items of clothing. Some textile artists work with patchwork, often combining it with embroidery and other forms of stitchery.

When used to make a quilt, this larger patchwork or pieced design becomes the "top" of a three-layered quilt, the middle layer being the batting and the bottom layer the backing. To keep the batting from shifting, a patchwork or pieced quilt is often quilted by hand or machine using a running stitch in order to outline the individual shapes that make up the pieced top, or the quilting stitches may be random or highly ordered overall patterns that contrast with the patchwork composition.

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