I was at the Army-2011 expo this week. Very cool, sort of like a military-themed Geek Picnic.
- POWERFUL COMMENT. Thorfinnsson on the Japanese economy.
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Adam Tooze: Chartbook #35: It’s not the fall that kills you …. Afghanistan’s looming triple crisis. “Afghanistan as a country where the costs of central governance exceed local capabilities, and is only possible through foreign subsidies.“
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China pulls Duolingo, Memrise from app stores. Tencent bans LGBT searches. “Effeminate men” banned from TV. Homework and vidya both restricted.
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FT: Russia starts to sow seeds of ‘wheat diplomacy’. I blogged about much of this before. 2021 should also set a new all time record in Russian (inc. RSFSR) housing construction.
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SVIDOMISM. RT: Ukraine should change name to ‘Rus-Ukraine’ in order to take ‘brand’ of ‘Russians’ away from Moscow, suggests top Zelensky advisor
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Chelsea Manning turns on Glenn Greenwald. No good deed goes unpunished.
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.
The CCP is getting based. Hopefully, the cowards in the Kremlin can emulate their neighbors to the east.
I have some feeling that Putin does or has developed some national socialist-type beliefs in the last decade or so. He recently talked about how Russia’s population would’ve been 400 million had it not been for the Bolshevik revolution.
This gives me an inkling that he’s aware of the need for population power and actually sees the need for increasing the population of Russians(real Russians not imported diversity). So far his efforts have not borne any significant fruit. Russia still has an abysmal TFR of 1.56, meaning the TFR for white Europeans in Russia is something like 1.5.
The technocratic solutions of throwing money at women and couples have not borne fruit. As we can see from Japan, South Korea, and Germany. The problem is more cultural.
Modern women are largely able to chart an independent life for themselves as a result of non-physical labor becoming predominant following the industrial revolution. This has sent their hypergamy into overdrive and many simply don’t have kids.
Plus, there’s the materialistic aspect of people foregoing children for a higher lifestyle.
The solution to these problems imo is to promote religion and clamp down on female earning power. Religion is the ultimate antidote to sterility.
Among whites, the only groups with high TFRs are those belonging to strict religious cults: The Mennonites, Amish, Old believers, Laestadians, old Calvinists, and the like. Putin should empower the orthodox church further and make it the state religion. Allow religious people to have their own enclaves and communities where they can enforce and live by their own sexual mores.
The second and more vital measure would be to reduce female college attendance to practically nothing. Make it harder for women to attend college. This would prevent them from becoming ”career women”(read: corporate drone) and encourage them to marry men in their own league. Plus, it would prevent them from wasting years of their fertile 20s chasing a degree or career.
The future belongs to those who will show up for it. If Russia can raise the birth rates of its native peoples and reach a population of 250 million slavs, it will be a superpower once more.
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1433288552498929670
1,121 likes
5,018 quote tweets
6,732 replies
Normiecons and tradcaths did not like this tweet one bit. The context of this tweet is the recent law Texas passed prohibiting abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy.
Always found it odd how this is still an issue in America, the European right doesn’t care about abortion. Just shows how strong Christianity still is in certain parts of the US I suppose.
I wonder how many more black Americans there would be if abortion had never been legalised?
There was an interesting documentary video on YouTube about the “Capitol Riots” of Washington DC. which were actually quite violent riots with people who had been badly brainwashed by the internet. The internet brainwashing could create a kind of flashmob around the parliamentary building, and recreate scenes to resemble more Ukraine than the world’s only superpower.
We can see some of the scary effects of internet brainwashing on a vulnerable, mentally unstable and “low educated” people. You can envisage how badly this will become as the 21st century progresses.
For example, the rioters are saying to the police that they support them, while they are beating them. And the rioters believe that they are changing the election result. It’s showing mainly symptom of erosion of an ability to distinguish their idiosyncratic internet world that is being especially customized by cookies and the structure of social media (for example, the “follow” function in Twitter, that customizes a newsfeed) to match their personal mental vulnerabilities and complexes, and the reality.
I would like to take this opportunity expose Eugene Wigner and his sister for the scheming conniving dirt bags they are.
Eugene Wigner’s sister had two bastard children thus locking herself out of a husband and a husband’s income. The solution to this problem in the eyes of the Wigners is for the sister to marry literal hyper autist Paul Dirac. who is too weak and socially isolated from possible support to resist being pressured into marrying a parasite and her two spawns. The Wigners insult decency and morality and even the non-aggression principle by their actions. Bald-faced opportunism.
The Manhattan project was nothing but a bunch of Jews making genocide weapons in the desert. The U.S nuclear weapons program had no SOVL, contrast it to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUKFc1Du86U
One last thing Asians are creative and SOVLful people, the notion that they are deficient in spontaneity and creativity does not match reality where they are in fact bountiful in these qualities.
Russian aviation leaves a lot to be desired, but Russian ground forces so far are doing pretty well.
I had no idea that Russian infantry units had access to portable combat radars. The Russian air force doesn’t stand a chance in a toe to toe confrontation with NATO air forces but the Russian ground forces seem quite capable.
The T-90M and T-72B3 tanks are not as capable as the M1 abrams but are still good enough to defeat US and European combat formations. The Abrams have more armor and a better gun, but the Russian tanks can fire ATGMs from their main guns, giving them a considerable range advantage over the Abrams which relies exclusively on its main gun(5km vs 2 km).
Russian howitzer artillery does seem to boast a shorter range than the German PzH 2000 and the US M109 but they can compensate for that with superior rocket artillery systems in the form of the Tornado-G.
If Russian SAM systems and the air force can keep the allies from gaining air supremacy, the Russian ground army can most likely defeat NATO in open battle.
Though my guess is that the Russian strategy against superior western air power would destroy it on the ground. Hypersonic missiles might not be effective against moving targets like carrier groups but they would be extremely effective against stationary targets like airbases and parked aircraft.
My guess is that’s the role they have in mind for the Kinzhal and Iskander-M. They wouldn’t even need to destroy the F-35s. All they’d have to do is destroy the AWACS and tankers which are too big to put in hardened shelters. Without AWACS and tankers, even the F-35 would struggle to conduct successful operations.
Whites need to think on an absolute scale. Maintaining absolute numbers is more important than pinching percentages with blacks in the US. It doesn’t matter how many blacks you abort, tens of millions of Latinos are going to pour over from across the Mexican border regardless.
The question is that if abortion had never been allowed, how many whites would there be today? My guess is at least 10-20 million more.
In any case, I’m not fanatical about abortion. Abortion should be encouraged for fetuses with abnormalities and for poor and ugly parents. In other cases, it should be illegal, barring rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life.
Taliban parades in Afghanistan
https://twitter.com/hammad_niazai/status/1433081142966693888
Soviet Operation Magistral in Afghanistan 1988
Russia to build new cities in Siberia and Far East as country reorients towards Asia
https://southfront.org/russia-to-build-new-cities-in-siberia-starting-with-300000-population-sputnik/
Gas Price in Europe reaches all time high as Russia bullies EU over NS-2 approval
https://southfront.org/desperation-hits-ukraine-warns-europe-will-be-solely-dependent-on-russian-pipelines/
Iran to join SCO as country moves East
https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2021/08/12/iran-to-finally-take-full-membership-of-the-shanghai-cooperation-organisation/
I hesitate to label, but borderline personality disorder sufferers will easily and sincerely imagine aggressions against them in order to get that sweet, sweet attention.
Sometimes whistleblowers do it mostly for their principles, like Snowden, sometimes they do it mostly because they are disaffected with themselves and therefore the world, like Manning.
Glenn Greenwald is a stereotypical target for those with Cluster B personality disorders. He is secure and understanding as well as courageous. Given that Cluster Bs tend to lack all 3, they will inevitably be drawn to try to get attention from him, by hook or by crook. His tendency to self-doubt, that has earned him those previous qualities, makes him especially vulnerable.
Fortunately, it seems that Manning has completely jumped the shark with this one and therefore nothing will stick. I would like to say I am sympathetic to the individual who needs externalise such nonsense, but f*ck off I like Glenn Greenwald and Manning can stay in their own hell.
This is going to be so interesting. China is tripling down on sublimation to achieve civilisational greatness. There’ll be some cool stuff that comes out of it, but a whole lot of complete weirdness before they relent.
Love the Chinese ban on effeminate men – this is basically an attack on traditional Chinese culture, and an attempt to ape late-Western social decline (in the “great age” of the West, like the 17th or 18th century, the male ideal was far more effeminate than what would be considered acceptable today).
Anyways, when a society has to use “force” – instead of relying on voluntary enthusiastic cooperation – to maintain social ideals, it has begun to rot at it’s core.
John Gray had a recent amusing article on China, in which he made the astute point that the West isn’t dying – it’s merely migrating to China, in late-decay form.
The problem with “banning” video games or any other social “ills” is that these things are rational responses to the deficiencies of the society – in other words, they are symptoms of a rotten society. A society that provided people with satisfying lives, would never see a surge in video gaming, necessitating a ban.
It’s stupid to merely treat the symptoms – and ignore the disease.
The fact is, China’s 996 work culture and the general culture of technocratic modernity leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness among the majority of people, who often turn to numbing pursuits like video games, or drop out, or drugs and alcohol.
It was the same thing in America during Prohibition and the made up category of “addiction”. Addictions don’t exist – they are rational responses to a society being unable to provide satisfying outlets.
However, a society can never question it’s premises – technocratic modernity simply cannot look at itself, and see that it is empty. So it has to pretend that people get addicted to things – it can’t be a rational – even a healthy, under the conditions – response to the emptiness at the core of the society.
And therefore symptoms get treated – never causes, until the society collapses.
On the plus side, all those fools who think merely applying ever greater doses of “brute force” can solve any social problem, and who always lack the cognitive ability to go “meta”, will finally have their object lesson 🙂
Not just China, but the West too is going through an increasingly frantic refusal to look at the disease of modernity and to merely apply brute force social control to all the emerging symptoms – and we shall see where this will all end up 🙂
Manning was headed for great things until that memorable evening when he was literally tweeting from a ledge.
Used to be an enthusiast about the potentiality of video games to teach foreign languages. For example, I imagined a purely auditory game, with speech recognition, where you would be a spy and learn a lot of useful phrases along the way.
But poz ended my enthusiasm. Language is less a tool of civilized people cooperating today, than it is one of subversion and invasion.
By now, I am convinced a lot of countries would reap a benefit, if they dropped compulsory English.
Literally claiming to tweet from a ledge. Suicidal thoughts are a complicated business, but tweeting from a ledge is unlikely to be part of that. How many people have tweeted before actually going through with it?
0?
The photo looked pretty bad, at least if you’re a Dem political bigshot. Better move on to a somewhat more stable tranny.
https://conservativefighters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Untitled-2911.jpg
Russia was always land and rocket/artillery power. Air force and navy are less important (with some exceptions such as nuclear submarines and icebreakers which will be important in the future).
Alexey Arestovich needs to better read his history books and recall how and why Ukrainians in the early 19th century began in earnest to drop the “Rusyn”, “Rusnak” “Ruthenian” ethnonyms in favor of the newer one “Ukrainian”. The move was a direct result of these early nationalists’ attempts to move further away from their Russian neighbors to the north. He really appears to be working at cross-currents here and exemplifies svidomism gone berserk. 🙂
I’m still in the middle of my trip out West, and don’t have too much time to comment now – but one thing I’m struck with is that there seems to be a mass American exodus into the wilderness areas and countryside, almost a collective sense of being fed up with city life and a newfound sense of freedom.
All the easily accessible camping spots – even the free ones off forest roads – are absolutely full. It’s a bit annoying for me, but with a little effort I can find my precious solitude 🙂
Most humans, being lemmings, simply do the “approved” thing and stay on the easy to reach places – to be fair, they are most convenient, and I often so the same 🙂
But with a little effort, you can have your solitude in the wild!
Is there anything comparable to this going on in Europe? China is still stuck in it’s 996 work culture, so it’s premature to ask about China – give it time. But Europe? Japan?
But rangers I have spoken to say this unprecedented in the over 30 years. I have to say, this gives America an almost “carnivalesque” feel at the moment – the citizenry seem to be having a blast! The “grim” American work culture seems to be, perhaps, making room for other attitudes to life.
On that note, I have found that a staple of the backpacker – backcountry explorer – is whiskey or wine, often in decent amounts 🙂 This did not used to be the case 10 years ago!
I thought it was the pandemic – but Europe has been open all summer, and it’s changed nothing!
Is this a passing fad, or does this portend a new phase in late-modern culture?
Interesting changes are afoot, and it’s hard to know what they mean – the “lie down” movement in China, the American exodus into the countryside, and the frantic efforts of Chinese and American governments to impose “brute force” social controls since they can no longer rely on the enthusiastic cooperation of their citizens in the “project of modernity”.
Of course, such desperate measures always end up backfiring, and are significant primarily for what they tell us about the health of a society.
Woke culture seems to be reaching it’s absurd peak – everything seems to be balanced on a knifes edge.
Interesting times! As the old Chinese saying gas it, it’s a curse 🙂
One thing I’ve noticed is that, no one – as far as I can tell – among the countless vloggers and YouTubers who feature content on exploring nature link it with explicitly Taoistic or spiritual themes. I may be wrong about this, but that’s what it seems like.
I think this is a niche waiting for me to fill it 🙂
Time travel? 🙂
Did you push the docking button on a two stage Zeus TEM? (Transport Energy Module)? I’m watching a lot of Konanyhin lol.
Between the Zeus, Kaplya-2 getting another shot, and polar orbital ROSS station, i see a lot of good things happening in Russian space program.
Hm. So Afghanistan will be the first country to be officially abolished it seems.
What happens then? Terra nullus? Free for all land grab?
How much “central government” did the typical rural Afghanistani experience? The money mainly ended up in Kabul, a few other cities, and overseas.
Algorithms supercharging confirmation bias.
But otherwise enjoy!
Aside from the technical aspects of the weaponry discussed here, NATO can’t win a conventional war because that war would not be Russia attacking NATO and driving to the channel.
It would be NATO attacking into the Russian sphere of influence, such as an attempt to seize the Donbas and Crimea.
The European and American populace would simply not tolerate the level of casualties that would be involved in a war of aggression, while the Russians would be fighting another Great Patriotic War.
The asshats in the Regime might believe the almost always wrong CIA analyses, and think the war will succeed because the Russian people would dissent and rise up against Putler. It it comes down to a war, they might find that opposition is shallower than they think.
I would go the opposite route then – amplify these ills and encourage them to the max.
Why? Speedrun societal collapse so the rebuilding can start earlier. Going out with a whimper usually means a bigger badder guy just walks in, enslaves/rapes/slaughters/eternally tortures the formerly superior natives and they’re wiped from history except as an artefact of being some bottom caste literal meat cattle for human sacrifices or oral latrine cleaners or whatever insanity and deliberate vicious humiliation awaits (seeing how popular culture evolved into total humiliating vitriol, this will DEFINITELY be the core of all future civilizations and the only surviving aspect, meaning they won’t live long either, nor will the ones after them, due to their core values being ultraviolence).
But going out with a bang? Creates a neat little black hole. It’s the danger zone. Like an ever expanding cancer bleeding pure chaos upon the word, a blight of sorts. Everyone is sucked in, and paradoxically, those who are not end up worse in the long run. But when all is said and done, the original MAY survive, at least partially and in name, and rebuild on a stronger level, even if their ancestors would kill themselves in utter horror and disbelief if they were allowed the privilege to come alive to see it.
Alas, we seem to be choosing the former – unwise! The civilization of the future can be imagined as a gang of mulattos slaughtering a man with jerry-rigged chainsaws because he farted in public and embarrassed himself therefore – cringe culture taken to it’s most extreme logical conclusion.
Of course, I am once again hyperbolizing – but it’s the only way that the reader gets the intended message and “raw meaning” aka the core ideal. If I were to water it down before posting, it would end up being loose, murky, misinterpreted – and to describe it in detail would be overly long and tedious if it were to be accurate. But like making a lemonade, first comes the pure lemon juice – and I leave the amount of water to the reader to decide.
War. Until complete exhaustion then it’s famine and plague. Lots of ads in the media with children who are emaciated.
This photograph won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Kevin-Carter-Child-Vulture-Sudan.jpg
It was not well-known at the time but when Trump boasted about winning in 2016 this is what he really meant.
Take the money and run:
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/02/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-corrupt/
Have you considered adding beer instead of water?
https://www.leinie.com/sites/leinies/files/Summer-Shandy_1.png
Anyways – despite all the predictions of an collapse of some kind being imminent, this guy claims there won’t be one and that we’re about to enter some sort of prosperity wave.
On the other hand, like the channel name suggests, it’s just “facts” – yet facts themselves don’t move people, feelings do. Forget human irrationality at your own peril!
I think everyone who realizes how empty and unsatisfying modern technological society is becomes enamored of apocalyptic scenarios initially – I went through a phase where I couldn’t stop watching zombie movies and other “end of the world” movies 🙂 I just loved movies with apocalyptic themes – it’s because one realizes civilization in it’s current form cannot – and should not – survive.
However, I don’t think we’re in control of the process – even if we wanted to accelerate things, I don’t think we plausibly could. There’s not a soft modern “last man” type alive who will give up an ounce of comfort for literally anything, much less an “ideal”.
Moreover, I think our civilization is dying because we are trying too hard to “control” things (so we get trapped in ever more sterile control spirals where nothing “new” can penetrate, we deny Nature because our “minds” know better, distancing ourselves ever more from what’s truly healthy for us, etc) – the way out is a certain amount of surrender of control, not more control, planning, etc.
Civilization and culture, it seems to me, is a cooperation between humans and a force they do not control – call it Nature, Spirit, God, the Unconscious. It doesn’t matter.
So civilization cannot be fully planned – it involves a certain amount of surrender, of cooperation. And that is it’s glory – a fully planned civilization would be merely a human artefact, and thus boring and uninteresting – nothing mysterious, original, or powerful about it!
Who could have predicted – planned – ancient Egypt, Athens, Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan London, the Paris of the Sun King, Tang China, Edo Japan, etc, etc?
The new civilization that arises on the ashes of the current mess will be something original and unplanned – not a mere dull repetition of what went before, not something our minds – so puny – could have thought up all on their own. It will be a surrender to and a cooperation with something larger than human – Nature, God, whatever.
And that, gives me hope and reassures me 🙂 Because if the solution depends on our puny minds, we’re pretty much done for 🙂
Thanks for the video but I’ve watched it and I would advise you to be careful. If you fully believe the narrative of this New York Times recount of the events of Jan 6th, especially the moralizing parts at the end, you may actually be not much less brainwashed than the Trumpist crowd. Did you notice for example how the NYT totally fails to mention the fact that Trump asked the mob to disband several times, which can be seen even in one of the tweets that they show? But of course they only highlight the sentences in that tweet that support their narrative.
I am not sure what is more scary, gullible people endorsing uncritically stuff that they get from the internet or Big Tech and the whole media apparatus brainwashing the population. In fact, is it not the mendacity and overt bias of the latter what is provoking people to look for alternative ways of informing themselves?
Among European elites, but normal people were excluded from that culture.
Ballet was far more feminine than any mass culture that exists today, and it’s a shock for us to see the famous ballets today, and how stereotypically feminine the male ballet dancers’ movement can be (e.g. in Swan Lake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXrRX6gxC-k.) . But it was never a mass culture, and would have been a culture shock for most of the people contemporary to those works of choreography.
Men had wigs until the 19th century, but it was only among upper classes (“upper class” and “middle class” were together such a minority of the population, that they are equivalent of upper class today).
https://i.imgur.com/BVKPybr.jpg
But the sans-culottes were more a “stereotypically male dressed” people.
https://i.imgur.com/LSxTqEi.jpg
Average people in China are multiple times poorer than in elite Western countries, and much of the wealthy people in China are recently wealthy.
At that stage, it’s for many people exciting and satisfying to have a new car, or a new kitchen. When a population goes from poor, to lower-middle class – then there is more than enough satisfaction from the consumer world. Consumption can remain mostly an end in itself (or meaning within the immediate use-values of the object which is purchased – car for travel, etc).
Remember when you have first been given money as a child – to go to shop and buy a piece of chocolate was a raison d’être or raison de vivre. Interest in whole foods, and organic products, and messianic hopes of saving of the ecology by such things, is something that begins at best in teenagers. But for children, there is pleasure in the immediate qualities of the consumption object itself (the shiny wrapping, the sweet taste, etc).
Liberal Western culture is very much customized for a section of population who has already been sold everything, and satiated by the immediate qualities of the consumer objects, and begins to see consumptions as a means to higher, more abstract ends.
Today, many of these are becoming values and culture which only makes a lot of sense if you live in a privileged or elite lifestyle or area.
In the consumption behaviour, these higher ends can be desires for saving the ecology, realigning to nature, creating social justice and equality between persecuted groups – or at least, self-interested ways to display interest in these ideals, that indicate that you are a good souled person (which latter can also display a comfortable socioeconomic level).
But this is a prestigious level of consumption which you see in elite areas of the West, and is understood as being self-interest by the cleverer ones. For China, this kind of culture will be many years away, even if there was a continued economic miracle there.
It’s similar in Russia that most people have no real understanding of the liberal Western fashions, because they do not align to the self-interest within the lifestyle of average people. On the other hand, if they had been given the comfort, luxury and lifestyle of a typical Harvard student of today, then the understanding of these trends becomes almost intuitive, and it’s not a mystery that professors do not much have to explain to their students how the game is played.
There is the increasing levels of comfort and wealth in the Western countries, which is confirming Marx’s theory (which was written by Keynes in terms of “15 hours working week”), on one hand. And the increasingly alienation of man’s consciousness by technological development (and intrusion of technology into every area of life) on the other.
Go to state parks which are no less spectacular than the famous National Parks but much less crowded.
The US State Dept. spokesman said that the US does not know how many US green-card people (legal permanent residents) are in Afghanistan. That’s hard to believe. Surely there is a record of all green-card holders. There is also a record of everyone who flew to Afghanistan for whom there is no record of flying out of Afghanistan. So, you’ve got the green-card data and the flying data. This is where, in a police TV show or movie, the captain says “run the intersects.”
I wasn’t so interested in the Trump aspect of the video. What shocked me is the size of the riots (the power of the internet to create such a flashmob), and what the protesters say in the videos. I.e. the level of the delusion that was induced by the customization of the internet brainwashing into them.
They really seem to believe they were going to change the election result, reverse a conspiracy, and re-impose Trump’s election victory, by beating policemen and throwing chairs around Nancy Pelosi’s office. This is also why many seem to not be concerned about possible legal consequences of trashing the superpower’s parliament, and therefore filming their breaking of the law.
Like in a video game level, from the video evidence it looks like many of believed that they are disrupting a conspiracy, and would be rewarded for their patriotic duty (even while beating police), and therefore they do not need to be concerned about the legal implications of livestreaming about yourself breaking into highly secure government buildings.
Yes it’s an alternative choice of “Big Tech” or “legacy media”.
There are people choosing (semi-customizing) between narratives of these partisan media groups like New York Times or Fox News, or alternatively being given a highly customized media experience by “Big Tech”.
That’s a semi-customized option of New York Times or Fox News, where people choose the media group that aligns to their views in a rough way.
But the “Big Tech” option is far more customized, and because it customized by its structure (Facebook, Twitter) and by cookies. Many people still understand there is a customization occurring, but less people understand that their newsfeed is being selected according to their personality vulnerabilities.
More customized selection is likely going to create more extreme results, as it becomes customized to very particular personal vulnerabilities, due its capacity for individual focus based on browsing and social circle. While a New York Times or Fox News still has to target its brainwashing at larger audiences, and won’t hit individuals’ vulnerabilities as accurately as we can see with the internet.
Yes, the effeminate ideal was confined mostly to the upper classes, the aristocracy – and perhaps the “upper bourgeoisie”, socially aspirational merchants and traders and scholars, who aped the aristocracy and hung on to their coattails.
But remember the aristocracy was the military elite – the officer class. This was taken quite seriously for instance in England, where the aristocratic officer class took it’s military duties quite seriously – and were tough and successful. Aristocrats also had a culture of duelling – physical violence, bravery, and toughness were considered quite compatible with wearing makeup and wigs, reading and quoting poetry, and going to the opera, etc.
A few years ago, there was a fascinating article in the NYT about the make ideal in Jane Austen – apparently, the “square jawed” hyper masculine type was not admired by women back then.
Similarly, feudal Japanese Samurai – whose toughness and virility cannot be doubted – quoted poetry and wore make up and fine robes etc.
Somehow, something weird has happened – when male virility, toughness, and warrior prowess is beyond doubt and on constant display, men feel comfortable cultivating a softer more effeminate side. When masculinity is on doubt, men become hyper-masculine.
Or perhaps, the measure of a civilization is how “holistic” it is – how it gives opportunities to express the full range of human nature for everyone, and not force confining “roles” too much on people – and we have declined as s civilization.
Yes, this is very true. That is why even though Chinese are objectively poorer than Westerners and have much worse work/life balance to boot they often report greater life satisfaction – although naturally, this is beginning to change.
But this is surely a phase – one that as china gets wealthier, is already begining to pass.
Your general point that much of what we call culture can be explained by material conditions, level of wealth, etc – is undoubtedly true and a point worth making. I was just thinking upthread a commenter thought China would somehow remain more “based” than the West as it got wealthier was silly.
But our longstanding disagreement, Dmitry, is that there is a genuine spiritual component that you always fail to acknowledge – not everything is mere status signalling or elite cultural consumption.
For instance, among Chinese literati and mandarins there has long been a tradition to abandon highly prestigious official posts and go live in poverty wandering the mountains or on a country estate – the loss of status, privilege, and comfort was serious and real, and cannot be explained by any attempt to signal status.
But I think you are still too fully enamored of your toy – material explanations – and have to fully apply it to everything before you can expand beyond it 🙂
Agreed. But it would be difficult to do in East Asia where only Confucianism is pro-natality.
I would be more lenient to female college attendance and only enforce some kind of male sexual affirmative action where the ratio of males attending college must exceed the sex ratio of the cohort.
And then cut all subsidies to tertiary education so much less boys and especially girls can afford the tuition, and pursues a more based lower career or homemaking path. Poorer people will breed, and if you get the economics right, you’ll get the sociology right.
BTW, why abort according to eugenic principles? Every baby has a right to live. Apply the Texan law across the board, no exceptions, not even rape and incest, and let the defective children die. Malthusian pressures and birth control can take care of the rest.
Trumpist rightoids and BLM leftoids are just spitting images of each other, having their minds ruined by specific brands of indoctrination.
Serious politics should move in a local and empowering direction.
I think you’re forgetting that both Irish, Greek (formerly) and especially Polish conservative parties pissed away a huge amount of their political capital trying to force couples to carry fetuses with serious genetic defects to full-term. Of course you have the other extreme where women use abortion as a particularly grim form of birth control, as in Russia or Armenia.
In general, I think the sensible position is to allow abortion, but only for cases of fetal deformity, retardation, or incest, rape, mental illness, or poverty regarding the parents.
Typical errant nonsense from AaronB, equating highly elaborate male fashions (wigs, makeup, stockings etc.) of the day with modern-day westoid ideas of grown men crying in public, talking to strangers about their private feelings, reversed gender-roles and/or subservience to women.
Yes, there were people like Rousseau, or Goethe’s cult of ‘Sorrows of Young Werther’, but these were both artists. Not to mention if you read Rousseau’s confessions, it’s made abundantly clear that most people despised his histrionic behaviour and affected hypersensitivity.
Although I suppose there is one point to made for today that tentatively supports our house-troll’s ruminations, contemporary culture has produced a masculine insecurity that often manifests itself in aping cartoonishly boorish ‘manly’ traits, like the (now dead?) PUA subculture, obessions with getting ‘ripped’, tattoos, MMA and many other examples of educated people glorifying low-class behaviour.
But even that could argued to be a manifestation of eternal human nature, in that genuinely sensitive men will often try to affect themselves as thugs, whilst actual brutes frequently do their best to appear sensitive and cultured.
You’re back and illuminating a lot of superficial assumptions that is still trapped within the framework of modernism! Without someone genuinely Taoist as you contributing I’m being herded around by many other commenters seeing their own ideologies as real, but in fact “impermanent”.
You see, this is what I was warning you about. If you think that Big Tech and legacy media (or the NYT and Fox News) are opposite sides of the current narrative spectrum, I’m afraid that you haven’t been paying much attention or you have been watching too much BBC yourself.
It might be true that a few years ago social media was still providing personalized content of the “wrong” type to certain communities or that a few Fox News hosts still dare to express ideas that would be banned on any other major outlet. But surely you must be aware that Big Tech ended up censoring the sitting President of the US (while the Taliban have no major problems using them as a loudspeaker). Is that not why an increasing number of people frequent websites like this one (which is also half-banned by Big Tech)?
Speaking of the BBC, what a joke they have become. The other day they published this video under the pathetic title “I used to be racist but my daughter changed me”. Sanctimoniously cringey: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-58330286
I don’t consider myself to be a racist. Having lived in multiple places and traveled the world, I am more of a a race-realist but I do not hate or wish any harm to anybody. Still, this kind of mass indoctrination by the media and Silicon Valley is no better than the Novosti propaganda I used to get from the Soviet Union as a teenager.
Thanks!
Nice to see you’ve been commenting a lot lately too! Always good to see anyone influenced by Taoism contributing. We should all feel free to express what’s on our minds, despite the attempts of the resident bullies to shut people down 🙂
Don’t let those bozos push you around 🙂 In the end, they are just scared – until that last exchange before I left on my trip, I had not truly realized how absolutely terrified some people can be of “ideas” that question mainstream assumptions!
It was truly eye opening – one should have sympathy for them. After all, their world is crumbling, and a new world emerging!
But the point is, male attire was not merely utilitarian and functional, drab and gray like a suit, but highly aesthetic and colorful, and attentive to beauty – considered in modern times to be feminine traits.
Moreover, very developed muscles and square jaw lines were not considered a male ideal – that too is a modern fashion. Yet men were extremely tough and brave.
Today’s gender roles – which we are apt to see as essential – are culture products of our times, if you study history. And that’s extremely useful to know.
In my recent reading on the very violent and brave American Indians, I read that male Indians were expected to speak in soft and gentle tones, not in a boasting, masculine, aggressive way – both men and women were admired fir being gentle.
That’s a good paragraph.
Hmmm, I think you are way over-generalizing here and again, leaving out the cultural factor.
In a society that valorizes brutishness, sensitive men may feel inadequate and some may try to affect themselves as thugs – but this isn’t an aspect of human nature, but a response to a dysfunctional culture. Many others will merely feel alienated.
As for brutes trying to appear cultured, again this will likely be a response to a culture that values refinement – I’m sure many poetry-quoting Japanese Samurai did not have a poetic bone in their bodies, for instance, and just conformed to expectations.
In the end, we are all tragic victims of social pressures which force us to hide and distort our true natures rather than express them freely and spontaneously – and perhaps, “social roles” are necessary for civilization, but the “good civilization” learns to have them, but to not take social roles too seriously – to laugh at them while publicly observing them, like the old Taoist influenced Asians 🙂
there will be no new cities. Just extra funds to build panelki in Artyom. The main news regarding infrastructure in the far east is the new tollway that will be built by CRCC around Vladivostok. This is the first time a chinese state corp will finance an infrastructure project in Russia (https://www.rbc.ru/society/02/09/2021/6131172f9a79475db006b92d). Why do dimwits that love big headlines always miss truly significant news?
Wyoming? Utah? Or did you change your plans?
I am doing some mountaneering in the Rockies this long weekend myself.
My biggest fear right now (outside of personal safety) is that, instead of the peaceful and preferable future AaronB have in mind, Svevlad’s one of brutal free-for-all come to pass, because people will prefer to down gallons of pure alcohol to fuel their increasingly disparate illusions in a Mad-Max world, than reflect and be tranquil; and by that time, judging by how all the modern institutions are liquidating themselves, no one will trust anything but their own senses, let alone what some hermit will say about “the Tao”, which is becoming incomprehensible to them.
But it is still the conclusion of terminal individualism in the Western mold, a natural “dead end”, even in a twisted way…
(Here is a mundane explanation for the surge in nature-seeking: everywhere else for usual vacationing are imposing either vaccine passports or COVID measures that is appalling to the sensibilities of their former patrons.)
BTW has anyone been following the situation in Myanmar? I heard opposition and ethnic militias are at the stage of exterminating loyalists. It deserves the attention everyone pays to Syria or at least Libya.
Wyoming!
Well, at first.
I did several truly epic solo backpacking trips in the Wind River high country – it’s phenomenal up there! I did several 35-40 mile 3 day trips. I met very few people – mostly walking for hours seeing nobody.
The country by the trailheads and the towns (like Pinedale or Boulder) give absolutely no indication of just how epic the scenery is in the backcountry, above 10,000 feet – and how wild and remote. Extremely windy, too – not for nothing is it called the Wind River Range!
But there are dozens of high alpine lakes – on one day, I counted 17! Every night I heard coyotes – there are wolves in the Wind Rivers, but alas I did not hear them unfortunately, and there are grizzley, but I did not see any bears either.
But alas, my luck ran out! Sadly, it seems the northern parts of the West is getting smoked out this summer, so I headed to more southerly regions – the San Juans, briefly, and now into my beloved Utah.
But I might head back to the Winds later this month. I don’t mind rainy/foul weather, but the smokiness was intense!
Btw, Wyoming is really deserty and desolate – the Wind Rivers do have alpine like areas, but it’s also clearly somewhat drier, and for long stretches I felt I could be in the Eastern Sierras, just on a much vaster scale. But something about the wildness of the Winds is thrilling.
Also, very cold! Several nights I got snow – in August – in the high country.
But based on what you told me before about liking lush green Alpine scenery, videos I’ve been seeing of the Cascades in Washington seem like they might be the best fit in the lower 48 in this regard.
I
Nice! Enjoy yourself out there – I guess this is the last month we really have in the high mountains unless we want to do real winter camping.
Of course, it’s impossible to rule out these violent breakdown scenarios – we know historically they do happen regularly, and they can be quite vicious. Your concerns are not without foundation.
However, for several reasons I don’t think the demise of our civilization will happen this way. For one, we are too comfortable, fat, and entertained – we are Nietzsche’s”last men”, not a barbarian horde, and not religious fanatics that might kill for an idea (we are materialists and atheists).
Secondly, there are no true barbarians left. I grew up with Blacks in the 90s – back then, they were violent and aggressive. I would get jumped regularly. Dealing with a rude black official was a nightmare.
But whatever process has softened everyone, has not spared blacks. In NYC, blacks hardly pose a danger – even with the recent uptick in crime. Black officials are today polite and efficient.
There has been a lessening of aggression and a “softening” in America, since I was a boy. I don’t fully understand it.
Rather than a crisis of killing and dying for an idea, I think we are having a crisis of collapse in motivation. This might lead to mass suicide rather than barbarian or religious fanatics like violence.
Nietzsche said that in the ancient world, the Greeks and Romans had gotten themselves into such a philosophic dead end with their sterile “rationalism” that people would have begun to commit mass suicide had Christianity not come and given them an “ideal” they could become enthusiastic about – Christianity, really, meant stepping out of the “closed, sterile loop” of rationalism and surrendering control somewhat and “going with the flow” (like Taoism).
I think we’re having a crisis of motivation and enthusiasm, suicide and anomie.
Finally, the vibe I’m getting from people these days isn’t the angry violent vibe – people seem fed up and exasperated, but in a weird way, almost happy. I’m not sure what to make of this – there are all sorts of news reports of anger and violence, etc, on airplanes and other places, but I just don’t feel it in the air. I was talking about this recently to a liberal friend – we both agreed that the news did not match the vibe we experienced in day to day life.
But perhaps I’m being naive.
And in the end, there is no way to rule out the possibility of a violent breakdown – God knows that happens with depressing regularity in human affairs.
I guess, as good Taoists, we shall have to simply go with the times and perhaps wait it it all out living simply in some country setting – or if we get swept up in it and die, comfortable knowing we are at One with everything and have merely gone back into the Great Energy to be reborn as something new 🙂
That’s a good point! And I’m sure that’s a part of it. Reasons can be multiple and overlapping – but even this is a rejection of the regime of “control” and a crying out for the freedom of Nature 🙂
Civilisational collapse is a meme, not a historical reality. When things get worse, people cut back on luxuries and things degrade slowly. Our world is more resilient than it ever was for the same reason as causes us to have many more luxuries. Degrading from our point may mean more violence, but certainly no breakdown. Our riots are nothing like riots used to be. Our wars are of choice and are much less too. What would a violent breakdown even be over? Black hairstyles not being prominent enough in advertising? Or being too prominent? Jan 6th counts as an insurgency nowadays. It also looks like a group tour that got overexcited.
As with the Princess and the Pea we are kind of ridiculous, but what a great thing it is to be able to bruised black and blue over a pea!
Abortion is a moral question. The important question is not whether you can kill someone who has consciousness for convenience (which should be viewed as murder in any case), but whether the fetus constitutes a person or not yet (are they capable of being conscious?).
The problem with a too general Christian prohibition against abortion, is that it was written before there was knowledge of the precondition for consciousness or soul in a fetus.
Today we know that there are stages when the fetus does not have preconditions for being consciousness (during early pregnancy), and there are other stages (during late pregnancy) when the fetus may likely have consciousness (or “soul” to use more historical terminology) – when there is evidence of neurological activity.
It should be quite simple that you must not kill the fetus when it has developed consciousness, can experience pain, etc. The question of whether you can morally kill the fetus in an earlier stage before it has developed consciousness is another matter – it could be argued that removing a fetus before it has developed neurological activity is not immoral.
Of course it is not acceptable to kill people because they have mental illness, poverty, disabilities, etc. In some cases, it will be more immoral to kill a person who was disabled, poor, etc than one who was not.
No consciousness has a choice in which body it was born, and everyone would experience pain in the same way.
The main question will be whether the fetus has developed consciousness yet or not (depends on which stage is the pregnancy).
They are both sides of the “narrative”; just the Big Tech has been more curated especially for you, while the selection of information “legacy media” can only be curated for larger targets.
How do you think you having this discussion now? What is your device, your browser (Microsoft, Google?), and how did you arrive in this website (if not Google, Twitter, etc), which is using cookies itself (although it has improved in recent years in the type it uses). All this content that is provided through your devices is more customized for your idiosyncratic vulnerabilities than organizations could have dreamed to have delivered to a population during the 20th century.
Silicon Valley is more powerful than “mass indoctrination” as that term might have been understood during the 20th century, because internet is indoctrinating both at mass scale, but in a personalized and customized way. The devices are delivering a customized information, based on the revealed vulnerabilities of the person.
By comparison, the “legacy media” has to be customized by the audience, but the content selection has to be more broad as it is delivered in the same way to a large audience. So Fox News or New York Times have millions of customers each, and the material has to contain a wider or less customized content, than what is provided through your devices by Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, et al.
Pokemon Go was like “test of concept”. With BLM and Capitol Riots, you can see some of the scary potential of internet to easily hack peoples’ minds and send real life zombie flashmob armies of human botnets in the cities’ streets.
There needs to be far more regulation (as well as public awareness – but really there needs to be regulation, as awareness is not sufficient), on how data is being used, with focus on peoples’ autonomy.
As there is like “Geneva Convention” for war, or “Declaration of Rights” – we will need much stronger for regulating our relationship to this technology to avoid some potentially dystopic scenarios.
Due to global warming, trees began to grow in the deserts of Siberia
https://cs14.pikabu.ru/video/2021/08/28/163016694826853233_1280x720.webm
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/clearly-unacceptable-error-facebook-after-labeling-black-men-primates-2529441#pfrom=home-ndtv_topstories
Goddamn pattern recognition
I didn’t phrase this in terms of ‘convenience’, I was at pains to specify in cases or being a product of rape, incest or serious deformity, its quite likely that person will live a life full of suffering, and quite likely bring suffering to others as well.
Well the greyest area here is poverty, I hesitated to include it, at least in modern industralised states I do sort of doubt that any state would allow any child to starve or even go malnourished due to poverty of the parents. Especially given today’s fertility rates.
But more importantly, rather than the state trying to claim the moral high ground, it’s just a fact of reality that in dire enough circumstances, people will resort to illegal methods of abortion, or even infaticide.
I think there’s little doubt that the latter was once widely practiced in cases of serious deformity, even in places and periods that the Church dominated nearly all areas of people’s lives. It’s also instructive to look at the disastrously bone-headed ‘natalist’ policies of Romania’s Ceausescu. Yes, the population exploded for a brief period, but a huge number of these children were sent to truly awful state orphanages, and often went on to join the criminal underclass. And the birthrate was ultimately little effected in the long-term, as people ‘adapted’ by resorting to truly ugly ‘amateur’ methods.
In short, I do think abortion often constitutes murder, but banning it outright doesn’t solve anything, and actually makes things worse. But sometimes it’s justified by the circumstances, in the same way I think euthanasia should be legal.
The results of yesterday’s hike in the forest
https://a.radikal.ru/a33/2109/6f/609ff25c5a25.jpg
Men need to make enough money, in order to feel comfortable in getting married and having children. Men understand that it is very costly to have a relationship and family. This would help the wife relax and not have to worry about finding work in the early stage of the marriage, which would – maybe- increase the number of children. My 2 rubles worth.
Re: https://gordonhahn.com/2021/09/02/a-bad-idea-for-belarus-russia-and-international-security/
Excerpt –
WTF!? Ethnically, linguistically, religiously and historically, Russians and Belarusians have more in common with each other than Russians and Armenians.
For what it’s worth, humans ARE primates.
Weirdly, it’s “secular” left who seem to have an issue with that, instead of religious right as one might expect.
Duolingo is of course notorious for littering LGBT ‘content’ everywhere, they even stuck femina uxorem habet into Latin which makes precious little sense. (Tbh such gems are work of volunteers, the company policy seems to be not giving a damn.)
China pulling it however seems to be more of a bureaucratic mess because the scope of the new regulations isn’t entirely clear.
(Disclosure: I’ve used Duolingo. There are worse things one can do with their time.)
All government media says that.
https://www.vesti.ru/article/2608547
https://www.vesti.ru/article/2608547
https://tvzvezda.ru/news/202193633-or6m7.html
“A society that provided people with satisfying lives, would never see a surge in video gaming, necessitating a ban.”
video gaming is like a drug. Drugs are dangerous because you can get addicted even when you have a satisfying live otherwise.
Policy in China is not as intelligent about fertility as you might think. The No. 1 problem in the way of higher fertility and actually easiest one to ameliorate is sex-selective abortion. In 2019, there were 114 boys for 100 girls born in China. This problem could easily be tackled by simply cracking down on illegal ultrasounds to enforce the almost 30-year ban on revealing the gender of fetus but there is no impetus to do this. To a huge degree, I blame the lack of action on the information environment in China. There’s little recognition of the serious degree of the problem because of little discussion of sex-selective abortion in official media. When social problems can’t be discussed or are little discussed, the problems keep on festering.
Also among Chinese including the ethnic Chinese contingent of Sinotriumph on Unz, there is an unwillingness to face the unpleasant reality. A Kansas political science professor in 2019 published a book claiming that the missing girls of rural China were actually not officially registered in China rather than aborted (but the book itself admits that registration practices improved a lot by the early 2000s). People who didn’t want to face the reality of course embraced his thesis.
Touche 🙂
I think that’s one of the myths our civilization has to tell itself – that drug addiction is a physiological, not spiritual, thing.
I find it significant that that the only known treatment for alcoholism that is even somewhat effective, AAA, has a strong spiritual component and stresses overcoming alienation and connecting to a larger whole.
In Japan, for instance, alcoholism is not recognized seriously as a condition – in a nation of heavy drinkers. The mental “conditions” a society recognizes are as much cultural as objective and real – for instance, it’s been said the best cure for “shell shock”, now known as PTSD, is to not recognize it’s existence.
I think if you look into the lives of “addicts”, you will find that their addiction makes sense in terms of their emotional and mental state.
Similarly, our civilization must see our obesity epidemic as a physiological and not spiritual thing – when it is becoming more and more clear that all proposed solutions that treat as purely physiological fail.
Might obesity be a spiritual malady of a civilization based on the premise that we are fragments cut off from the whole, and thus never “enough”?
But can a civilization question it’s own premises – “level up” so to speak – without thereby ceasing to be that kind of civilization? Perhaps, a civilization is characterized by certain premises it cannot question – like Goedels Incompleteness Theorem.
In defense of civilizational collapse, it absolutely does happen, but it usually takes an environmental or military disaster of incredible scale.
In the event of neither, America’s collapse will continue to play itself as a gradual change in circumstances as you are saying.
One does not know whether the water is warm until you dip your toe.
I agree with most of all these points.
On the subject of obesity, I will add though that the material complements the the spiritual on this one: it is far easier to get obese on modern, heavily processed foods and food ingredients like corn syrup (that literally store fat longer, etc.), aren’t absorbed properly, and are made widely available through state funding. Even with their spiritual sickness, they would have a hard time maintaining 600lbs with fresh eggs, meat that doesn’t come from a factory farm, and oil not pressed from rapeseed. Of course, that we have such a system is spiritual sickness, no?
Basically, the Devil of Modernity is manifested not only in spiritual corruption, but in the physical processes enabling said evils.
Are you married to T. L.?
Roe v. Wade caused a lot of cucking, when it comes to adoption.
President Biden said, “It’s about ending an era of major military missions to remake other countries.”
Kamala Harris is not President.
The Deep State does not exist.
but I did not see any bears
Keep looking. They will find you and your spirits can commune and unite.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the ruling authorities want to turn Taiwan into a part of the Anglosphere.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/search?keyword=bilingual%20country
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4280848
Regarding Greenwald, it is not the first time he has been accused of being greedy and unprincipled. Remember Sibel Edmonds?
GREENWALD’S TWITTER WAR OVER PAYPAL-NSA ALLEGATIONS
https://shadowproof.com/2013/12/11/twitter-hosts-epic-war-of-words-over-paypal-nsa-allegations/
soul in a fetus.
God keeps commodity souls on a shelf and magically pops one into the fertilized egg before mitosis begins.
The rest of your post makes sense, but you’ll need to elaborate on this point.
Is your point definitional, in that a civilisation becomes a new one if it successfully questions its premises?
Or is it an observation that only via transformational crisis, which makes it new in so many ways, is a civilisation able to question its premises?
I don’t much like either argument, as the first seems pointless and the second is not going to be identifying a rule, but a tendency at most. Perhaps you have another point?
Wigner was one of the greatest philosophers of his day. He was not only a great physicist, but thought very deeply about the fundamental nature of reality, as philosophers were wont to do. He’s the author of “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” which, though by no means original and in some respects as old as the original Pythagoreans, is a fine outline of what remains the single greatest scientific mystery of our time. He’s also the originator of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment, which may be the best evidence for the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. (And has quasi-religious undertones, to such an extent that Stephen Baxter posited in his future history series that the great religion of the future will be “The Friends of Wigner.”)
As for his sister: She was married to Dirac for 50 years and had two children together. It seems as though it worked out. Dirac himself would surely object to your strange “defense” of his virginal honor.
There’s nothing very new in this in Chinese history. The difference now, of course, is this new emphasis on muscular values happens in the presence of a strong state and is borne of boisterous self-confidence, as opposed to the cope and seethe that characterized it during the late Qing era.
https://i.imgur.com/WW44Aht.png
The whole structure will be toppled before reformers can have their chance, as I’ve always said.
It is an odd form of even “gradual” “collapse”, where living standards continue to improve and technology advances.
Furthermore, if you ignore the media hysteria, what events have we got that look like collapse?
A 2 hour “insurgency” on Jan 6th with no law enforcement deaths and which looks more like a tourist jolly than the storming of the Bastille?
A summer of sometimes violent protests over whether police are necessary or not, which, while dramatic and harmful, seem to have been greatly enjoyed by its participants?
A political establishment that finally got bored of pretending that Afghanistan is crucial to American interests and that it could be managed through TED talks into achieving Scandinavia?
The such extreme lack of serious worry that complaints about fictional hair touching can be elevated to national multi-day news?
I too am excited to see what weird and wonderful developments will happen on the next season of Game of Geopolitics. I will also engage in the fun sensationalism and excited hysteria, but we’re not actually collapsing. Even the one thing that comes close to making a good argument for “collapse”, the declining TFR, could easily be solved if people wanted to. It isn’t like any part of the baby making is prohibited or has new difficulties associated with it. People are just choosing to do other things.
1/3
Taiwan isn’t Singapore and will never become Singapore. But this is clearly a bid to attract teachers from the other side of the strait who are suddenly out of work.
They would have a better bet at promoting Japanese, and a lot of people are cucking their former colonial master right now, because their present image of Japan is the servant of American Imperialism, not an imperial power in its right. This would have been an affront to Old Chiang.
Hopefully they’ll later realize how learning languages of rapidly declining powers is meaningless.
Were some of the things you a describe as “feminine” popular among women in those times? If not, than they are not feminine. AFAIK, high heels and tights on the lower legs weren’t worn by women (who covered themselves), this was masculine clothing at that time. Face powder, like deodorant in modern society, was universal due to smallpox scars. Are elaborate wigs and facial hair feminine?
What do you think of a lion’s mane compared to the appearance of a plain lioness?
An 18th century person might complain that women have become masculinized by wearing heels.
The interplay between a strong state at the height of its confidence and the cultural waters it is trying to swim in and redirect will be fascinating.
From last week:
Forget Gender-Neutral Fashion. Chinese Men Want Women’s Clothes
https://jingdaily.com/chinese-men-womens-clothes-chanel/
What examples are there of boisterous and confident modern states making similar sustained efforts to change the cultural flow? I welcome the experiment because experiments are fun, but I see it as likely to get overwhelmed.
You will either see a civilizational transformation (the Great Reset and Agenda 2030), or these attempts being aborted, collapse because of the alienation from modernism reaching a critical mass.
BTW, looking at AK’s comment on late Qing: The ultimate expression of militant Confucianism (or militant Chinese Tradition) is the Boxers, even tho they are motivated by a mystical folk-religion belief of victory and xenophobia, in the most admirable sense. China was irrecoverably lost when the Great Powers put the last of the rebellion against creeping modernity down and divided China among their equally modern influence. I can’t go fully Svevlad on it because that and the following 120 years are a done deal, but at least I can read alternate histories.
How would that work?
I think you’re confusing the way individuals might behave with how complex societies change over time.
And China, though it is sad to be missing a lot of its former culture, is doing ok.
This is an interesting point I don’t hear much. I too grew up around a lot of blacks. More recently I went back to places and situations that would have put me in grave physical danger thirty years earlier, and I was astonished to find … nothing much. A lot of the same sort of people were still there, but they were much more passive and bourgeoisified(?) than I remember, often gazing vacantly into their smart phones. (Of course, these things are relative. A lot of these places and situations are still not very good, but I was surprised to be able cross neighborhood lines, which formerly would have gotten me killed, now without consequence, even with young women in tow.)
How to account for it? Increased affluence—even of the underclass—is probably part of it. As is the ubiquity of the passivity-inducing vidya screens (“smart phones”). But there seems to be more to it than this.
Me neither.
I should add I haven’t been back to these places since last year’s BLM riots, so maybe things have reverted since 2019. But even those riots, considering the massive scale and duration, were not really so intense compared to prior riots in US history. Crime has gone back up to former levels in a lot of these places. Is that the new new normal? We’ll see, I guess.
A nice reminder of a long discussion that I had with Bashibusuk a year or two ago about mushroom hunting. If you’re still out there Bashi, why not do an occasional Thorfinnsson and let us know how you’re doing?
Latin alliance
Theory:
https://twitter.com/MarionMarechal/status/1224699470962659328
Reality:
https://twitter.com/ioannisekolovos/status/1434169213288128515
You’ll need to learn a lot of what you will consider “conspiracy theories”. Objective, material facts don’t matter as much as how those are perceived by all agents in the struggles ahead, and these narratives will feature increasingly prominently.
…in Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry, which is now in Taliban hands. If the US government were any good at administering puppet states, those records would have been instantly transmitting to the US embassy and back to Washington DC, but US government is not, so those records didn’t, and now the State Department has no idea who is where.
But this is nothing new. The US government also has no idea how many citizens or foreigners are inside the US, though it is much better at spying on and pressuring people inside the US than inside Afghanistan. After all, minions of the police state would much rather live in Georgetown than in Jalalabad.
Unironically sounds more plausible than the “science” narrative.
Sure, socially coercive measures are periodically tried by governments throughout history.
I just think they always mask inner rot. That the current Chinese government finds it necessary to resort to these measures suggests to me inner rot – time will, of course, tell. What appears strong is often brittle inside.
Intuitively, a truly healthy and expansive society enlists the enthusiastic and voluntary cooperation of it’s citizens, and when “escapism” becomes widespread, it may be time to question if that society is capable of offering a satisfying way of life.
Of course, my critique is not specifically of China, but of modernity in general. The West is just as much afflicted – I reject the “binary” thinking so prominent on Unz, where China and the West are “alternatives”. I think they are the same basic civilization in different stages of decay.
So basically all abortions.
Yes, absolutely, I’d agree with that. The spiritual and physical are not separate – all that artificial factory made crap is undoubtedly spiritually polluting, as well as physically harmful. The two go hand in hand.
It is possible to be thin eating artificial modern crap – as a younger man I once ate for about half a year nothing but pizza, ice cream, and alcohol – literally. And I was thin, although probably not very healthy – masked by youthful vigor, probably 🙂
And I don’t attribute the rise in obesity solely to the availability of junk food, as one “physicalist” theory has it – in Japan, artificial junk is more ubiquitous than in the US (although tasty traditional food is equally available), and they’ve actually gotten thinner since WW2.
But you make an excellent point – modern artificial junk food seems to “go with” a certain lifestyle, a certain mentality, a certain body size and shape, and certain physical health outcomes.
Looked at “holistically”, (and I’m not sure we can disentangle the complex of elements and “tweak” just one) it’s just bad news – use sparingly (a small amount of junk per day is fine, I’d say).
The sad thing is that the upper classes simply don’t eat this junk for the most part – markets that cater to the upper class in NYC sell largely high quality natural products. And it isn’t even that much more expensive! And as you eat better, you eat less, and spend less.
Ironically, it is the “high IQ” class that rejects artificial science based foods and opts for “natural” foods, while the spiritual desolation that afflicts America is worst at the lower end – the “peasant” class, which never invented science and which should be closest to nature, eats furthest removed from nature, ironically.
It’s almost as if the class that invented technocratic modernity rejects it in many of the most intimate areas of life but foists it on the class that has no hand I’m creating it. Dmitry might say this is mere “status signalling” but surely, it’s more than that.
It’s not like this in, say, Thailand – the street food available cheaply to the common working man is traditional and healthy.
“Latin alliance”, lol. The only object of such a project would be to extract fiscal concessions from Germany. I still kind of hope the right will gain in strength in Italy and France, but as a German one shouldn’t have any illusions, these people will play the anti-German card at the first opportunity.
That “national conservatism” conference in Rome was also really weird, they had neocon-type people from the American Enterprise Institute speaking there, plus that dubious Israeli-American Yoram Hazony. Very strange melange, given that Meloni comes from a hard right (post-)fascist background in MSI, one wonders who’s trying to use whom at such events.
I agree that in this “harm reduction” view, it could be improving the situation to substitute legal abortion, where there would otherwise be illegal abortion. But that is a specific scenario, which won’t be the situation in all countries.
If you look at the abortion in the United States since the late 20th century, which is the context where most of this debate occurs, the situation for people like orphans has little comparison to Romania of Ceausescu, or even contemporary Russia/Ukraine. That is, in the USA there is an undersupply of orphanaged children relative to adopting parents.
American parents were going to Russian (before the law sent by Lakhova, who herself refused to adopt any orphans) or Brazilian orphanages, because of relative lack of children available for adoption in the USA. And American parents indeed adopted many orphans who had serious issues and diseases, especially fetal alcohol syndrome.
Outside of some very clear cases, it would not possible to know or decide for another person, and our moral intuition also seems that only a person can decide for themselves if their life was valuable or not.
For example of a kind of “Hollywood story”. there are even those successful career musicians like Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder who might have been aborted or allowed to die (congenital blindness, premature birth respectively) in many times and places.
And there are many people who did not live such famous careers, who would still value their life.
One of the problems with late term abortion, is that it could possibly be very painful for the fetus (if the fetus is late enough that it has attained to consciousness), and there doesn’t seem to be even an “harm reduction” attempt to make abortion to be painless.
This carelessness can be partly because our long term memory doesn’t seem to be developed before we are around 2 years old.
Before we were around 2, we were still very conscious, but our memories haven’t been “stored” in a long-term way. As a result we have this lack of knowledge about our earlier experiences, and this results in a emotional lowering of moral sense or compassion to the possible consciousness that might existence in womb in the later stages of pregnancy. Although from epistemic closure it could be inferred our conscious experiences were not that different to how we felt when we were 2 or 3 (just that in the latter ages our long term memory capability is “installed”).
Childless hags aren’t going to save western civilization for that you need real men and there aren’t any. Trump despite his stupidity kind of approximated one but he’s gone.
Second time I read about you visiting the Wind River region. That clearly shows that I must explore that area too, which is not terribly far away from me. On to the bucket list.
It’s been like that all summer long and there’s no safe area really. Depending on where the wind blows from, the Pacific wildfire smoke goes to one part of the West or the other. I spent a week in Las Vegas in July and the sky was also full of smoke most of the time.
This is in fact a regular occurrence in summer and early autumn. Apparently, the Indians were used to it and some toponyms, such as “Valley of Smoke” in Indian tongue, have that origin. But it’s getting worse. According to what I’ve read, it’s caused by a combination of factors: higher temperatures, bad forest management in the Pacific states, especially California, where almost all catastrophic fires occur, and invasion of highly flammable exotic grass species. It’s sad but it’s also a part of the natural order, to some extent. You can’t have half a year of arid conditions in heavily forested areas without natural wildfires clearing part of the vegetation cyclically.
.
You got another freak storm for the second year in a row 🙂 This was a late August deep trough that slid from the Pacific Northwest to the Rockies a bit unseasonably and gave the fist dusting of snow to most of the Rockies. But yes, that area is quite frigid. Pinedale often registers the daily minimum of the contiguous US in wintertime.
No, I didn’t convey the idea properly. What I meant by “alpine” scenery is mountains that tower above the timberline and you can see naked rock and snow from the valley. This was in contrast to the Western Sierras and parts of the Rockies, where the timberline gets to the top and the scenery is less spectacular.
But I actually prefer arid areas. All things considered, the mountains of the US West are more breathtaking than the Alps, with a richer contrast of scenery. The high ranges of the interior West bordering desert areas are among the most striking landscapes on earth, eg La Sal mounatins near Moab:
https://peakvisor.com/img/news/La-Sal-Mountains-Arches.jpg
https://peakvisor.com/img/news/La-Sal-Mountains-Mount-Peale.jpg
https://media.tacdn.com/media/attractions-splice-spp-674×446/0b/2d/12/d9.jpg
Have fun yourself!
So China’s solution to banning effeminate men is to…. reduce gaming hours and to heavily monitor the internet for any criticism towards its economy (wow, an economy that can’t handle criticism, you know that’s a sign of strength).
It’s almost as if China is purely profit. It’s only narrative for 40 years is ‘profit’. No wonder they hate these mofos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
What we call in the West “a seasonal worker”. In the East it’s a “movement” (and I will forgive you if you think I am referring to a bowel movement).
“You thought Jews were greedy, wait until you see Chinese greed”.
Whatever, the more idiocy the PRC pulls off the more wealthy Chinese bring their fortunes over here. I like my house valuing over $1.3 mil when I bought it for $400,000. Thanks China, please continue to go full retard. We could use a few more trillions in liquidity. Better than the Indian imports by far.
It’s funny, all these countries trying to deny young kids from playing games. It’s almost as if there wasn’t a whole generation of kids who just played games their entire lives who in turn became programmers and went into IT. Shit the best memories of my life was when I was 12 playing Half Life 1 (pirated no less because my dad would kick my ass if I asked him for money for a game) with friends trying out different mods that were released every weekend by random gamers (who in turn were practising their modelling skills, programming capabilities, and troubleshooting handling).
Another great memory was getting an emulator compiled on my old 486 computer. Everyone’s parents were were buying their kids gameboys to play Pokemon. I wouldn’t DARE ask my folks for money to blow on games. I learned new skills so I don’t get left behind. I got to enjoy thousands of dollars of entertainment for free because gaming gave me the DRIVE to learn these new things. To understand how to crack games, how to memory trace values, how to properly compile in C and even dabble in ASM (yeah at 12 before fucking google or gay ass plebtube spoon-feeding faggots idiocy on how the earth was flat).
Today it’s much more mature to be a youtuber/social media faggot who doesn’t actually contribute anything (in terms of an end product which can be sold). Nah it’s more mature to be a gigantic billboard for advertisements. Kinda like Karlin, except he’s shadow banned so the only ads that come near his Twitter are the low-class kind (iodine pills, bad teeth, Joe Rogan, and fake universities). This should explain the influx of recent visitors-now-turned-regulars (like that queer who carries a sword to compensate for his lack of manhood).
Wanna make boys into men? BAN SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE TIKTOK…oh wait… you can’t… it’s part of the whole surveillance package. Because a digital mirror is totally manly……
I guess that’s what happens when a nation such as China goes from riding donkey’s to driving cars in less than a generation. Technology begins to scare you into enforcing ancient retardation.
At least some are slowly starting to realize their ancient Chinese ways is all bullshit.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dQg9w7YAJQQ/YTOrw10-A0I/AAAAAAAAHac/3DrWg4fHPrEbz8ET5P16CiH0wLoUIo3tACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Screenshot%2B2021-09-04%2Bat%2B13-23-00%2BWing%2BChun%2BKung%2BFu%2Bvs%2BMMA%2B-%2BDing%2BHao%2Bvs%2BXu%2BXiaodong%2BYu%2BChanghua%2Bvs%2BXiong%2BCheng%2BCheng.png
Took an MMA guy beating multiple ‘masters’ but hopefully the message was received. The old way is only good if you liked living during the great leap backwards.
Don’t listen to me. Let’s all wait for when China pulls a USA and sacrifices a portion of its middle class to stay afloat. Then we will all see how “strong” it really is.
I got some sentences about the Mongolian high pressure system weakening (I think) but I didn’t get where that is. Chara Sands near Irkutsk?
Visiting Southern Siberia is definitely another item in my bucket list. The pictures I’ve seen of the Altai area and the Lake Baikal region are astounding. But I’ll have to be careful with the mosquitoes if I go in the summer, I guess. They love me as much as I hate them.
While the cultural relativism argument can be applied to history to some extent (as you say with high-heels), if you know any of the history, we know these upper class fashions (and many aspects of lifestyle) were viewed as feminine by their contemporary reception.
For example, look at the satirical cartoons produced during the French Revolution, where the ruling classes’ feminine clothing and style is one of the main targets to be satirized.
Or going longer back to time, for example a commentary text about Ben Jonson’s (1572-1637) criticism of this clothing:
https://i.imgur.com/4dG7YUQ.jpg
Lion’s appearance is a natural feature, not a result of learned behaviours. It’s quite a different topic than the cultural indicators of sexual dimorphism in humans.
Decorating ourself is only among a certain type of primate, and perhaps some crabs, insects and birds. (It’s not completely unique to our branch of primates, as bearded vultures also use makeup https://www.newscientist.com/article/2130980-vultures-smear-their-faces-in-red-mud-which-they-use-as-makeup )
But in our own culture, for example the 19th century is not culturally far from our own. We are culturally close enough to notice that some 19th century elite culture like ballet, is constituted by movements for males which would have been considered feminine in their (not so culturally different against our own time) context.
Actually there is some kind of abnormality happening in the US and the UK, as life expectancy stopped increasing during the last 5 years, this is not happening in all other developed nations.
In the modern age a stagnation or decline in life expectancy (for US whites it declined) is not a good sign.
This carriageway scene in “Once upon a time in the west” (after 5:30) was made in Utah I believe? It looks similar – there is also some filming in Arizona. (I know many of the inner village scenes were filmed in Southern Spain, as well as the trainstation).
The top photo really draws you in, makes you want to hike inside these large fantastic natural megaliths. Did you ever go in yourself? Any more photos of these strange but beautiful spiraling rocks?
This is clearly not the case. The ballet has the same aesthetic as in the films about kung fu. Or if you want in a Japanese manga
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXSbfDfXcAIO6Tq.jpg
https://leebruce.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/285_1182794105.jpg
Agreed, but it is a single metric stagnating after a long period of improvement.
It is sad but hardly “collapse.”
Powerfull open thread starter post AK.
She is a certified cat lady.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7PWY6bXkAA2nxM.jpg
Yes, that is Monument Valley in southeastern Utah. Those buttes are in fact a different geological formation from the arches near La Sal. I love good Spaghetti Westerns, such as that one, but what a joke mixing these fabulous locations with the artificially eroded badlands of Southern Spain 🙂
Oh yes, that is Arches National Park. Been there many times. In a short stretch you go from a mars-like desert to a purely alpine environment like you see on the second picture.
I don’t think a woman should be forced to carry a rape baby to term. And as far as aborting defective children, honestly, it’s a kindness to them. They are spared from a life of misery, dependence, and jeering.
That being said, abortion is something that is difficult to be calculating and rational about. The prospect of snuffing out the life of an innocent child in the womb is….unsettling to say the least.
Women want pockets, but they don’t want their body line to be affected by those pockets. This is why they don’t buy clothes with them and they are not very available.
Christian Populism isn’t a vote-winner in France.
Stalin imposed secularism on Hungary, and Poland.
France imposed secularism on themselves.
“Wigner was one of the greatest philosophers of his day.” – I did not know it. I looked at his
and I did not find there much depth or philosophy. On the other hand I looked at R. W. Hamming’s
and found it interesting and very readable. The author is thoughtful, curious and honest.
Wigner’s article (although I haven’t read it so can’t say much) does seem like it could have been an influence on the late 20th century philosophy debates, even if nobody accepts the claims.
I’m not expert about philosophy, but you can see this article was published in 1960, and so it is chonologically possible to be an influence on Putnam and Quine in the 1971 “Philosophy of Logic” – when they had annoyed the philosophical community by supporting realism for sets based on indispensability of maths in physics, and in Quine’s “web of belief” ( https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/ ).
The philosopher Solomon Feferman’s writes the readable summaries of these philosophical discussions ( http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/psa1992.pdf ), and noticed he referred to Wigner in that article. Feferman rejects almost all of those arguments.
You can also see how they discuss it in the online philosophy discussions in the 1990s forum, so it was still remembered some decades later (as a kind of strange article) in their forum.
https://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/1998-January/thread.html#1013
Is anyone watching the new Netflix documentary about 9/11?
It’s not as shocking or high depth as last year’s Challenger disaster documentary (“Challenger: The Final Flight”).
But in episode 4 especially, it illustrating some of the shocking incompetence in Afghanistan, and how the local people became alienated. It actually seems like some of the most incompetent aspects of military operation in Afghanistan was prepared by Obama under influence of Biden around 2009.
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Here was a typical kind of comment on the old 1990s philosophy forum about Wigner’s article. (That 1990s forum is difficult to navigate.)
https://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/1998-January/001013.html
The old link for his paper doesn’t work now, but it’s on his new website: http://www.personal.psu.edu/t20/papers/hilbert.pdf
Wigner’s influence in philosophical debates extends well into the 21st century. Max Tegmark’s “Mathematical Universe” theory — which solves a number of metaphysical problems via sheer brute force — owes a huge debt to Wigner.
Penelope Maddy’s objections to Wigner’s position, which Feferman repeats, are inane. The objection in that paper’s conclusion really just boils down to “natural systems are complicated, so mathematics as used in the natural sciences is always idealized and doesn’t literally represent reality, so it’s not ‘unreasonably effective.'”
This is nonsense because every known and finite physical process is, in principle, simulable — “every finitely realizible physical system can be perfectly simulated by a universal model computing machine operating by finite means.” Mathematics can indeed perfectly describe our natural reality. It just so happens that approximations and idealized mathematics are usually “good enough” — and running ultra-high-fidelity simulations is far beyond the capabilities of even our best supercomputers — so approximations are always employed by working scientists.
I doubt that what Wigner wrote influenced anybody because it is, let me be frank, jejune. The greatest influence on Quine was Pierre Duhem. Duhem had better understanding of epistemology and the process of scientific discovery/evolution than any of his British and American late followers.
And I would recommend reading R. W. Hamming for his freshness and modesty. You may enjoy his speculation that Galileo could have discovered his physics by scholastic reasoning and that Pisa experiments were superfluous.
Mentioned previously how my grandfather had a classmate nicknamed Nigger Jim who was white. Found another amusing example of the sea change that has happened in America’s culture regarding race.
There was a famous fiction series about a kid inventor named Tom Swift. A sort of proto-pulp that began in 1910 but went on for decades in dozens of volumes. Sort of like Nancy Drew. They might still be making them.
Anyway, he had a comical, black butler. And his nickname was “Eradicate.” (Not sure for what reason.) Some 70 or less years later, (not sure when the character was dropped) I was watching a cartoon, where the black adopted son was nicknamed “IQ.”
And BTW Duhem formulated three archetypes of science: British, German and French. They overlap, it is a matter of emphasis and not necessarily all British scientists are British and so on. When I read it years ago it struck me as true.
His first Ph.D dissertation was rejected (politics and jealousy, he was conservative and religious) and second was accepted when Henri Poincaré was on the panel.
“It was reported that Berthelot had said: “This young man will never teach in Paris.” Berthelot’s edict came true.”
Ignore the zeitgeist and spirit of the time at your own peril – but you factoid people are all like that, aren’t you?
People make self-fulfilling prophecies. A civilization’s power isn’t in it’s economy or military, it’s in it’s psyche – from that is which everything is downstream.
Since we’re constantly talking about some sort of collapse, and the general IMPRESSION being a bad one, no living standard improvements or economic growth or funny green line going up will fix the fact that a vast majority of the population has simply become demoralized, and demoralization is contagious unless you’re already immunized, and it’s eternal.
Indirect Collective Suicide will certainly be one of the “holy terms” of the future
The male dancer in Spartacus is pretty macho.
Few things more gay than the NFL. A friend of mine who loved to play softball used to tell me tennis was a fag sport. I enjoy playing tennis but the culture of it is dreadful.
If you like looking at rock formations south Utah is the greatest show on earth.
This helps:
https://www.amazon.com/Roadside-Geology-Utah-Felicie-Williams/dp/0878426183/
You can drive your car to Dead Horse Point.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Dead_Horse_Point2.jpg/640px-Dead_Horse_Point2.jpg
The single strongest impetus I’ve found which encourages women to have children is…if a young family member dies in an unexpected way. I suspect that strong awareness of death is why Israel has such a high tfr. I suppose one way of seeing it is that it is a coping mechanism: its a strike for life against the randomness of death.
I don’t think that can really be replicated.
I’m playing around with the thought that declining tfr might have less to do with the decline of patriarchy and than with the essential absence of death in modern life. After all, death used to be common, and just like gravity, when a body doesn’t have its usual stressors, parts can behave erratically.
In practice, the Red Queen bottleneck of society makes Confucianism pretty anti-natality: if you can’t maximize spending on one child, he might not make it. So why even bother with a second?
Hopefully the education bottlenecks do something about this.
I’ve just finished a five day water fast, which I’ve since continued into a five-day “protein sparing” fast(less than 800 calories a day but consuming 0.7 grams of protein per pound). The results were pretty good, as well as some other interesting errata. I’ll post more details once I’m done with it completely – its set to end Monday, so I hope to post about it Tuesday or Wednesday. I had battery of biometric devices, so there are a lot of details that I can provide on it, day by day.
Long story short, though, I definitely recommend water fasting at least 72 hours to men(women react to it differently since by definition, it is designed to mess with your hormones and they appear to downregulate metabolism in response, which is definitely NOT a desired response). My jury is still out on the protein sparing fast. Perhaps most notably, muscle mass does not appear to decline at all(or if it does, it is pretty minimal) while fat percentage definitely does. I was also able to continue my workouts(3x strength, 3x cardio a week) and even make advancements, however, there are some kinks to this which I’ll discuss further.
Additionally, I will note that the cognitive effect of being in a fast is notably positive. I was taking supplements to add to it, but its honestly seems to match the level of illegal stimulants but without any of the aggression effects associated with it. However, it does share some of the downsides of intense stimulation as well, including sleep disturbances and a general ability to “power through” almost anything, even as you consciously notice your body failing on you. This is usually a positive thing, of course, but it can be overdone and requires careful and conscious judgment of your status since the usual emotional failsafes become muted.
Regardless that few in philosophy accepts Wigner’s views (or “unscientific mystificism”, as Stephen Simpson describes it in the forum posts I linked to), perhaps because Wigner was famous and prestigious in his own field of physic; it looks like it has a resonance in the philosophy debate.
For example, if you look at Penelope Maddy’s website. She was in 1990s the most prominent critic of the Quine-Putnam realism, according to Feferman and others.
On her website, she is listing the debate about Wigner essays, and the response to it, as a topic of one of her lectures: look at her reading notes for “lecture 16”.
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/phil%20math%20syllabus%2017-18
Solomon Feferman also referenced to Wigner at the end of the essay where he summarized the historical debate.
So these important critics of Quine, seem to enjoy referring to the Wigner essay.
Quine’s theories are very sophisticated, and a lot of his famous papers (including “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” with the Duhem influence) are written before the Wigner debacle. But you can see Wigner is often discussed in the context by Quine’s critics. Perhaps Wigner’s view was quite influential on the 1960s. I’m not saying anything like Quine-Putnam would be based on those views. But it seems to be part of the context of the philosophy debate of that time.
Actually Quine didn’t know anything about Duhem when he wrote it, so the confirmation holism was an independent theory. (Although perhaps maybe there was indirect influence through the people he was friends with when Quine was living in 1930s Vienna, like people such as Carnap who perhaps knew those earlier theories.)
Ballet Spartak at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Very heroically
https://novat.nsk.ru/upload/iblock/7f0/BST_1623.jpg
We (Sinosphere as a whole) still have colossal human capital even if a hundred million is wiped out. Mao said (even as one of the modernist accelerators in our torturous 20th century), “We have a very large territory and a big population. Atomic bombs could not kill all of us. What if they killed 300 million of us? We would still have many people left.” That was when China had 750 Million people, and after getting rid of 300 Million, there would still have been 450 Million, the level at the end of Qing.
This is why it shouldn’t even come up at all, which means no abortions or infanticide in any case, just contraception. If you don’t want babies, decide before you have sex.
You explained the root cause of your coming up with Mad-Max scenarios quite well, and that’s why I can see some of your predictions (in “milder” forms) coming true in times of unrest and distress. But I don’t suppose your pressure cooker scenarios for the medium-term will work at all, and they can sprout unexpected outcomes.
Feferman’s argument was against Quine’s commitment to sets (and even much stronger theories of others) – that Quine’s commitment to sets is too strong, because you can ultimately formalize much the math that is needed for physical theory with much weaker systems which are only number-theoretic. Feferman’s project is to show that he only has to be realist about numbers, but that then Feferman believes the philosophy discussion needed to move onto an understanding of what the number realism means (where he admits ignorance).
To be honest, I haven’t read the Wigner views yet though, so I can’t comment on what that Wigner argument is.
I’ve been reading lots of Quine books in recent years and they are very enjoyable. But Quine’s “trademark” of being realist about sets (which had plausible to me when I read it) now seems it was quite deflated by Feferman. I’m not any kind of expert about philosophy though; just had been a fan of Quine as a hobby. Because I just read Quine’s books as a hobby, I didn’t have time to read the arguments against him.
The ban only applies to online games. Your Half-Life 2 doppelganger in China is unaffected and I’m actually hopeful this may foster a renaissance of single-player games as all of the oxygen and money has been pretty much eaten by online and mobile microtransanction and gacha games.
Oh yeah, and easily circumvented via VPN.
And how long would that impressive number of people survive with water and farmland irradiated?
But then all the money goes to Japan because they are fleeing to JP servers.
If you’re talking about nuclear war, sure, but I wasn’t talking about a MAD scenario, but extrapolating trends in China. Massive dysgenics and social failure leaves your basic resource base intact (as far as pollution is contained and technological know-how remians, which are largely independent of dysgenic trends).
Interesting redditor take on the Taiwan War
https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/phgacu/why_has_japan_become_so_vocal_about_taiwan_and/hbild9p/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It reminds me of how the real challenge for the Taliban was not destroying their enemy, a local client state of the US and its decaying forces, but handling the aftermath, hence them being more cooperative than many people expected so that they gain international recognition and support.
For the PRC, preparing for the post-hot war phase means reducing DC’s ability to undermine their development.
From another redditor:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/phgacu/why_has_japan_become_so_vocal_about_taiwan_and/hbj7ojz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
According to a PLA watcher, the PLAAF’s domination of the skies in this theatre from the start was not certain until the 2010s which seems to be one of the main reasons that a quick victory was not in the cards until the 2010s.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/anatomy-of-a-taiwan-invasion-the-air-domain/
You’re confusing what excites you, which therefore contains some personal truth for you, with what is true for geopolitical events.
Personal change can feel like death or suicide. It is where an individual lets go of some of their preconceptions of themselves to better align with their soul and the requirements of life.
Politics is one way in which many young men grapple with this as they seek to grow into true adults. They will, therefore, foresee much collapse and “collective suicide”. The process would be much easier if they could talk to themselves in personal terms rather than geopolitical code, but this coping mechanism is a comforting one so it isn’t let go of easily.
I assume your life is requiring you to be more assertive and to let people know more of your emotional needs. This putting down of boundaries is a hard one as parents and others can experience a normal increase in these from their children or relationships as a betrayal or with a sense of loss. Yet ultimately they should be gratified by the individual maturing and taking responsibility to let others know how they feel and to look after their own feelings in an adult and communicative manner.
The mathematician Weyl pretty much made group theory. His group theory work is not written in a manner that physicists can understand it or make much use of it.
Wigner is the man who made group theory understandable to physicists. This book is a masterpiece:
https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Application-Quantum-Mechanics-Spectra/dp/0127505504
It is nice that you take people and yourself seriously, but you’re going to need to keep that characteristic while also learning to take them and you a lot less literally. Otherwise you’ll remain in a state of shock when people, including you, consistently fail to follow up their literal proclamations with actual actions.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/884062801407123496/Christcuckery.jpg
Miohyio makes about the same amount of dough whether the whales pay them on the SEA server or in the CN server. The only net difference would be that the SEA or JP servers hire more support but that’s trivial.
Caspar von Everec recently wrote about the destructive powers of Covid in these terms:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/commie-anti-vaxxers/#comments
As that thread has cooled off, I though that I’d revive his thought here, at this open thread. Can anybody verify if what he wrote is accurate? I find this to be incredibly enlightening information, if true.
So, it looks like you probably had some time on your hands to write a short compendium regarding automobile/human safety as you recently promised. Promises, promises. 🙂
From this description of Jesper Lutzen’s paper (which I haven’t read) Lutzen is much closer to how I see and feel about mathematics in physics, i.e., I do not find anything very surprising or unreasonable in the effectiveness of mathematics.
By the late 18th century some of that style may have become anachronistic.
Ben Jonson appears to have been referring to particular items of clothing such as gowns and not to the general dressing of those times. Here is Ben Jonson himself, in a frilly collar:
https://cdn.britannica.com/71/150371-050-3967DCE1/Ben-Jonson-engraving-Edward-Scriven.jpg
Sure, and instead of claws humans made spears and swords. Instead of lions’ manes, European aristocrats worse luxurious wigs or elaborate collars.
In the 16th century the elaborate men’s clothing often included padded codpieces, emphasizing the male organ:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Don_Juan_d%27Austria_1.JPG/1200px-Don_Juan_d%27Austria_1.JPG
https://elephant.art/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Parmigianino-scaled.jpg
Here is sir Walter Raleigh:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aXELPxi207c/Xb8Ri9xvqaI/AAAAAAAADsQ/Zaa-xwpP9DwcSwFUtvUM8dvxMRKPPj-eACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ncma-67-13-5-unknown-man-raleigh-ireland-sbs.jpg
Led countless military expeditions, joked with his executioner. A tougher killer than most modern men.
Such men conquered entire continents.
:::::::::::::::
So we see elaborate costumes emphasizing leg muscles (heels and tights) and puffed out chests whereas women were covered. A 16th century man would see his 21st century male descendant as not only physically much weaker and probably more cowardly, but also emasculated and feminine with his modesty.
https://twitter.com/YungBhujang/status/1142214400956387328?s=20
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/884140757689172038/unknown.png
Not man, but Maryada|| Like many E Euros, TGT has blinded you into race idolatry & self-hatred||
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
Well, yeah, I wrote some down stuff on what I keep around, but I wasn’t sure if there was much interest in it and I’ve been pretty busy otherwise(including running this experiment). But yes, if you’re interested, I’ll go finish it after I do this report and knock it out on an Open Thread – I have it mostly done and went ahead recently and reorganized my kit again.
Taliban take over Panjshir province
https://twitter.com/RisboLensky/status/1434592261262745604
The men in those paintings don’t just dress more feminine, but their physiognomy is more feminine – refined, intellectual looking, thin.
None of them look like the square-jawed, muscular “he-men” of modern popular imagination.
The tough men who actually conquered the world, look nothing like what moderns think a “tough man” ought to look like.
A 16th century man would be astounded at how much larger and more muscular, more rude, boastful, and aggressive in speech and demeanor, how lacking in courtesy, politeness, and refinement, modern men are – especially if he went to a gym 🙂
If he was particularly astute, he would recognize that this fearsome outward display masks inner weakness.
More likely, he would be initially impressed – only to quickly discover that this excessive masculine display masks inner weakness and cowardice.
And so it goes.
But few modern men understand this, living soft lives remote from actual toughness and violence. Masculine display has taken over substance.
Yes, the Winds keep on drawing me back! I will probably be there next summer too. There is something about their wildness, and epic scale – the weather is fierce, the elevations are high, the wild animals are many, and the terrain is very varied.
I spent a bit of time in the San Juans – very pretty mountains, but they feel much softer and less wild, also less varied.
You’re completely right about the wildfires – I spoke with the ranger, he said this is common every several years.
I was by a fire tower in Wyoming, and it said this tower used to spot and help suppress over 300 fires every summer! Obviously this is completely unnatural – somehow I don’t think the Indians did that 😉
Wildfires are healthy and natural – there are Zen mountain poems which talk of their beauty.
I was also reading that many forests in the West are over 5 times thicker than they would be naturally! And in Wyoming, this has allowed the beetle that’s been eating pines to decimate entire lowland forests. I’ve walked through completely dead lowland forests – an eerie experience. Luckily, the high country forests are in good shape.
To be fair, there was a certain eerie and mystical beauty driving through the High Plains of Wyoming shrouded in smoke, the sun dim and red 🙂 Only, it burned my throat, and was too hot.
But I wanted the piercing blue skies of the West! Cool mornings, and piercing blue skies. Luckily, S Colorado and Utah have been good so far.
Ah, ok so I understand better your scenery preferences now. In that case, you will love the Winds! My preferences are similar – I enjoy Alpine scenery, but love dry conditions and dramatic changes etc. And while I love forests, I also need more “open” areas interspersed with trees etc.
The area around Arches and Moab is sublime, I agree – I am on my way there as I wrote this 🙂
Hope you enjoyed your weekend in the mountains!
For me, I think the collapse will take the form of a reordering of institutions if the long-suspected economic crisis occurs or there will be a gradual degeneration of society until at some point historians will look back and say “Yeah, despite it being a complex and century long phenomenon, this right here is the point at which it was different enough from what became before that we should really consider it a new phase of existence for the entity known as “The United States of America.”” Etc.
Nice photos.
In 1967 I was at a scout World Jamboree in Northern Idaho (unimaginable at the time that I’d ever come back). We had a weather station. We recorded a temperature of 120 F (48.9 C). I suspect that a scout weather station would be very well sited.
I like the passes over the Rockies in Colorado but as I have observed here before, the mountains in BC are very much to my taste. Then there is Northern Nevada. Nothing like your territories. However, I cut my teeth as leader of the Brecon Mountain Rescue team and Nevada is an echo of the Brecon Beacons complete with Hereford cattle.
Given the seeming liberalisation of Turkish society* I wonder if the Turks in Europe might in a few generations end up as reactionary time capsules compared to ethnic Turks in Turkey? It would be ironic if Erdogan’s dream of a devout Turkey comes at the hand of the ethnic replacement of Turks by Arabs and other non-Turkic Muslims.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/turkeys-family-ministry-moves-turn-down-k-pop
None of what is happening in Australia should really be surprising, when you consider that they have compulsory voting.
That said, those quarantine camps would come in handy as waystations for resettling blacks. After they are sent back, I do hope they will agree to charge over the hills in the thousands with spears in order to create tense moments in movies set in Africa, during the colonial period. Perhaps, also there are one or two cities there, which after some clean-up, could work as stand-ins for Western cities, in “fear of a black planet”-type movies.
As a traditional (or something like that) saying about the history of philosophy – if you try to avoid the history of philosophy, then you will make every mistake in philosophical history.
There are generations and even epochs of debate on these problems, and just reading a recent textbook (unlike with science and technology) isn’t sufficient to provide overview of different possible positions on such problems.
So even a physicist like Wigner that understands very much his own subject, might have a very limited awareness of the different positions that are possible on this problem, or how it can connect to other philosophical topic.
I haven’t read yet this Wigner essay, but in general you can often see a kind of stereotypical “simple’s people philosophy” from the physicist community.
For example, on Dirac’s Wikipedia article, there are such weak examples of “unmoved mover” arguments for God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac#Views_on_religion
So Dirac was a great physicist, but yet provides less interesting arguments on that topic, than any university philosophy textbook, that you can find in any bookshop today.
Yes but it “rides above” to some very old philosophy problems.
There is an example from the chapter introduction you linked: “Gray’s contribution is a hard, thoughtful and critical assessment sharply focused on Wigner’s text. His concise opening summary concludes with a statement of the five core problems posed by Wigner (somewhat buried from sight in his 1960 exposition). Why are there laws of physics? And why are they knowable by us? ”
We discussed a bit about these topics over two years ago. I wrote my replyback then – https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-72/#comment-3130092
At that time I was naively reading Quine though, and I reflect this problem of being an hobbyist with limited time, that tries to have opinions about such a complicated topic as philosophy. I.e. I could enjoy reading Quine, but I was not aware of the rejections or refutations of his arguments (by e.g. Fefferman).
I simply don’t have much knowledge of the varied and wide debates across the 20th century, and am therefore gullible enough to “fall in love” with the first opinion I read within it (even while Quine-Putnam don’t even need to commit to as strong as sets within their own indispensability argument).
With Quine’s logic textbooks, or views on philosophy of language, it’s easier for an amateur to notice his eccentric views, and be a bit sceptical. For example, in his wonderful book on language (“Word & Object”) there is a lot of very antiquated sounding behaviourist terminology (although everything Quine does is very enjoyable to read and internally coherent).
Are there any economics knowledgeable people or economics students (if only Thulean was still here?), that understands why the USA’s GDP per capita (on Atlas method) has been growing so fast in the last decade?
USA’s GDP per capita (on the Atlas method) has been growing faster than China’s. According to this World Bank Atlas method, it was 9 years ago almost same as Japan’s, and now suddenly it’s 50% higher.
https://i.imgur.com/DAhS4D6.jpg
Why would they want to pay a human and economic price when there are better opportunities to grab Taiwan, after the US descends into civil war and is unable to commit anything to West Pacific.
This is what happens when you fail to set up stringent censorship, not on opinions, but on “cultural expressions”. But compulsion never works too well, and what needs to be done is to raise your kids in an culturally isolated environment where they are only in contact with the ideologies or traditions/cultural forms you want your children to internalize.
Money printing and control over world trade thru the Dollar.
They were probably tough and wiry thin, not feminine thin, and therefore stronger than soft overweight modern people while also being more “refined.”
In the discussion of feminine dress of 16th through 18th century aristocratic men, it’s clear that this was peacocking: showing that you are so rich and powerful that you can afford to deliberately handicap yourself by wearing ridiculously expensive and impractical clothing. No doubt there was also an arms race in ridiculous dress, either for sexual selection as in birds or for social status. As in all arms races, it is a pareto improvement that some mechanism puts a cap on it, and we should be grateful that our 19th century ancestors figured out how to do exactly that. “Look at that faggot!” was a very effective arms control mechanism. Alas, that treaty has been abrogated.
I am reminded of the opening line of a classic children’s story:
They are realists.
Betting on a civil war in the USA in the first half of the 21st century is not realistic.
Robert E. Howard’s Conan is a character of tremendous vitality, but there’s a kind of Saturday morning cartoon feel to it, in that winning a girl never seems to carry into the next episode. He’s a lot of things, including king of Aquilonia, but he is never a father of sons, and so I think there’s an unintended sterility to the stories.
Perhaps, the constraints of the medium or market. But, if there was a movie series, the moral censors should make sure it is fixed. A barbarian would want sons, and have them, at least by the sequel.
When men wore frilly collars, they were items made over in wills. Probably, the cheaper production of cloth helped collapse some of the fancy signaling. Maybe, as well, the end of the aristocracy? But it is interesting to contemplate whether the more modern decline in dress (say, the past 100 years) was somehow part of the longer trend, or a discontinuity with it.
The lines are being drawn before our eyes. Even if there isn’t a large-scale conflict there will be intimidations, dissociation and skirmishes.
Your point will stand if those are what will come out.
There are a number of forces at play leading to the current low-tide of sartorial taste, some benign, others pernicious. Broadly, on the one hand, there is the reduced value of clothing for signaling. For example, as Thorfinnson has pointed out somewhere, dressing well used to be a sign that you were credit-worthy, while now we have near-instant credit checks. On the other hand, it is part of the general degeneration of culture, for example in speech and writing. And our civilization is not the first to undergo such a degeneration: the phenomenon is clearly visible in Ottoman bureaucratic records, for example, the early generations of which were neat and beautiful, the later generations of which were quite sloppy.
Both extremes– excessively vain style and careless ugliness– are symptoms of an unbalanced mind, though it is better to go out with a bang than a whimper.
I should add that there is here an excellent opportunity for cultural arbitrage. A man of the right should be worthy– in speech, in physical build, in manners, in dress.
The new underage gaming law in China got me thinking, what kind of upbringing should the parents, the community and the state foster on the young, and what bad habits/vices should be hidden from them? And what kind of vice should be heavily regulated or banned altogether for adults?
I would prefer a lack of pop culture (what elite children are doing), where a literate education takes place instead (I’m pretty inspired by the Confucian style of upbringing). They won’t touch the smartphone or use computers more than 3 hours a day, and none of them should be spent on “entertainment”; they can instead read and learn to play and talk with others. their seniors or pals. Finally and obviously, they shouldn’t be shown GloboHomo propaganda or woke crap, and even porn.
I would take the libertarian position on vices and let every sinner and addict get high on whatever bad they are tied to. Social Darwinist pressures will wipe out their prospects and their future generations, and after that we will have a more sober society 50 or 100 years from now. Just don’t let degenerates take control of any place of power or influence, like what has happened with GloboHomo. Pandemics strengthen immunity of survivors in the long term!
“Substance” is whatever achieves your aims. “Display” is only what allows you to delude yourself that you have achieved your aims.
Your comment is mostly display. It allows you to plausibly tell yourself that “these other men…they’re not substantially masculine.”
But you’re wrong. A lot of them are successfully using the ways in which they engage with masculinity to get what they want.
They don’t want to win a pitched battle against the “Northern Barbarians” because those tribes no longer exist. Instead, they want men like you to be threatened by their masculinity and to have to go away and obsess over it. They also want other things like fawning female attention, which they frequently get too.
Meanwhile, those into your idea of “substance” can only comfort themselves that, who knows, maybe if the Jurchen invaded, they would be well-prepared. I doubt this hope would prove true, but it actually doesn’t matter if it would, since that scenario isn’t real.
I appreciate that your imaginary labels for “masculinity” seem more solid than the ever-changing reality of the phenomena which get labelled as such, but they’re your imposition and the world is never going to actually conform to them, no matter how much you imply that they are all “faggots” if they don’t.
I don’t think that it is clear that it was “peacocking” in the way you describe. Yes, you needed money to do it, just as you need a low time preference to have a masculine physique today, but it also looked cool. The idea that masculinity is drab and uniform is basically communism. I am being a little facetious, but it is based on the idea that macho men are only focussed on hard facts like tractor production and number of kilos of grain yielded.
It seems that so many people are still trapped in a similar neurosis to Karl Marx’s. He didn’t want to be seen as a superstitious Shtetl Jew, so he clung as hard as he could to a very limited materialism. That was “serious” and “scientific.” Men should be concerned with these very narrow practicalities or else they are women or “faggots.”
It made a kind of sense at the time as food was limited and people needed feeding. It became almost completely defunct by the 70s, which, not coincidentally, is when the USSR, with its macho so-called realism, passed its expiry date. But it is completely comical today, and only getting more anachronistic.
Work out what your unconscious self-judgements, fears and unexamined emotions are, and don’t force them on your children, like they were forced on you.
A civil war requires a divided national elite willing and able to wage war against each other.
Where does or will a formidable counter-elite exist in America? I do not see it.
Minor rebellions won’t make much of a difference.
https://twitter.com/martyrmade/status/1434245653274640386
But is peacocking in that context feminine? A male peacock who is brown and who has plucked his plumage would be a trans peacock.
The elaborate dress of the 16th-18th century aristocrats was only feminine if you think that “elaborate” itself is somehow feminine. Elaborate collars and wigs approximating a lion’s mane, puffed out chest and shoulders, tights and heels emphasizing leg muscles, padded codpiece emphasizing you know what. And it was not merely show, these guys slaughtered each other in duels, slashed their way across the globe, conquering empires and bringing down peoples whose males were often far less “elaborate” than they were.
I suspect the “softness” at the top came first (rot starts at the head) and so eventually the elaborate dress came to be associated with weakness by the not-yet-soft proles. But it was not that way in the 15th to mid 18th centuries. And now, of course, everyone has caught up and is more or less equally weak in the West.
The best essay on education of the young for my money is by Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century French philosopher.
It balances working with the natural inclinations and desires of the young with the guidance of the old and wise – the whole thing is very Taoistic.
He wrote the essay for a noblewoman who was a friend of his. It’s quite good.
Russian media received “VIP security” in Kabul : )
https://twitter.com/RisboLensky/status/1434907119531266054
Their model of masculinity is the Khmer Rouge. Work the plough, don’t have colour in your clothes, anything else is for women and gays.
It is “Spartan”, but not like the Spartans actually were. The real life Spartans were famous for art, literature, poetry and dance.
It is also “Stoic” but not as the Stoics suggested. They think Stoicism means having no emotions or being emotionally repressed, but the Stoics proposed that you accept all of your emotions, which is the exact opposite.
It is a wounded masculinity that has retreated into ignorant caricature. It tells you the individual is hurt and not much more.
Unfortunately, you partake in it too, with your assertions of what “softness” is. If “softness” and “weakness” are aligned, they are the definition of soft. They are unable to take whole parts of themselves seriously, because they’re afraid they will be judged ‘unmasculine”. This is very weak indeed. It is betraying yourself to avoid imagined judgement.
Only in the archaic age when there were poets like Tyrtaios or Alkman in Sparta. Later on they produced nothing of cultural value and indeed almost nothing about them would still be known today if it hadn’t been for the writings of other Greeks.
Agree with most of your comment, however I placed softness in scare quotes for a reason.
Tyrtaios came after the semi-mythical Lycurgus and the establishment of Spartan institutions.
Masculinity is violence and Weapons are Shakti (divine feminine)
Abrahamics aren’t their Pagan ancestors, and no amount of larping will change that reality.
ਮਿਟੀ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ ਕੀ ਪੇੜੈ ਪਈ ਕੁਮ੍ਹਿਆਰ ॥
ਘੜਿ ਭਾਂਡੇ ਇਟਾ ਕੀਆ ਜਲਦੀ ਕਰੇ ਪੁਕਾਰ ॥
mitī musalamān kī pērai paī kumhiār .
ghar bhānhdē itā kīā jaladī karē pukār . (way off phonetically, copy + paste)
The dirt of the Muslim’s grave becomes clay for the potter’s wheel.
Pots and bricks are fashioned from it, and it cries out as it burns.
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
That’s why it ends with Hour of the Dragon. Howard basically explicitly remarks in this: without an heir, Conan realizes his exploits are close to empty except in terms of destruction. It also results in a lack of loyalty to him from his subjects, who basically see him as a passing fad without legacy.
By the end of that novella, he marries Zenobia and his adventures end.
Like most writers, Howard wrote what he knew. He never had children and only a few steady relationships.
If you are talking about modern history (e.g. European conquest of America, India and Africa), these were advanced modern technological societies, conquering continents of “third world people”, who were often at the hunter-gatherer stage of society. It’s not much related to male/female cultural aspects of the conquerors, but the disparity of modern technological countries against premodern agricultural, or even hunter-gatherer peoples. The latter especially often reacted in shock and with social breakdown.
In world history though, the greatest soldier has been perhaps Alexander the Great, who had conquered empires of equally matched societies. And in his sexual/gender life – with his boyfriend Hephaestion, and his child eunuch Bagoas. Certainly the sexual and gender norms of different epochs are an interesting topic, but not one which relates much to possibilities of military success or failure.
Lifestyle of the ruling class, including this clothing, has described as feminine by contemporaries in Europe from the 16th to the 19th.
This is not just Ben Jonson, but also for example Rousseau’s criticism of the ruling class in non-Republican societies.
But people like Rousseau are not saying that the “feminine aristocracy” in Paris, was militarily weaker because of that.
Well read texts like Shakespeare. Certainly the gender-norms of behaviour you can read in Shakespeare, were very different to the current stereotypes.
I had culture shock on the beginning of “Romeo and Juliet”, but it’s because we have inherited different norms about gender from the 19th century, that did not exist in the 16th.
This is in the scene before Romeo has met Juliet.
He had fallen out of favour with another girl, and as a result he refuses to leave his bedroom, and he is crying all day in his bedroom. And his family is talking about it.
https://i.imgur.com/Mt9JXQt.jpg
The reason he is crying all day, is just because he a girl he liked, doesn’t like him.
https://i.imgur.com/Kf6Zbc7.jpg
By the late 19th century, this would be viewed as “women’s behaviour”, and it looks similar to Freud’s female hysteria patients. But in the end of 16th century literature – it could evidently be the behaviour of the romantic male hero. So certainly the scope of male gender behaviour was not quite the same as one of today.
And the more you will read old literature, the more of such kind of culture shocks you will experience.
The more feminine behaviour of elites in the past, was not better or worse than the culture we inherited – just different.
This is where Foucault’s theory is accurate. There are historical disjunctions, and we find the concepts don’t map onto our own ones between the historical disjunction.
Sexuality of the Ancient World, really can provide a culture shock, and not just when you read about the Ancient Greeks.
Even self-consciously continuous traditions like Christianity, can seem to reverse its positions when there is an attempt to tie it across different epochs. https://theconversation.com/christian-attitudes-surrounding-abortion-have-a-more-nuanced-history-than-current-events-suggest-162560
That’s quite an exaggeration, Indian states weren’t that backward at the time of the British conquest, they had firearms, also literate elites, a developed commercial sector (with bills of exchange and the like), advanced taxation systems etc. On some level the British were only able to achieve their conquests, because they had taken over the Bengal state with its institutions and entered into an alliance with native elites. And the later wars against rulers like Tipu Sultan or against the Sikhs were actually pretty hard-fought, because those states had begun adopting European-style infantry tactics and embarked on at least some modernization.
Obviously New World societies were much more backwards (basically stone age), but the Aztec and Inca empires weren’t at the hunter-gatherer stage either, they were numerous and socially complex societies.
It’s still expensive to maintain nice, unstained clothes, as you see with the young people in Italy or Japan on the extreme side. But careful attention to clothes is simply prioritized in Italian/Japanese culture.
In the Italian and Japanese culture, young people have social pressure to always wear new looking clothes without stains, as well following fashions.
And at the same time, they go to cafes and restaurants wearing these clothes, where you will inevitably destroy them with stains, and need to spend even more money to replace their clothes.
This is good and bad. It creates connoisseurship (which is a form of civilization). But it is hard work and expensive.
Following fashions is also requires you to change your clothes every year or so even if you managed to maintain them in adequate condition.
You can see Italian youth today have this social pressure to wear perfectly unstained clothing.
The main thing for these guys is your clothes look like you bought them yesterday and they look like they have never needed to be washed.
Look at this dude’s white sweater at 3:00 Imagine trying to eat bolognese sauce without staining that.
The opposite cultural extreme from Italy/Japan, is Israel, where the expectation is that you can shabby, stained clothing, and there is no need to follow fashions.
That is, Israel must be the least vain country in terms of attitude to your visual appearance.
This lack of attention to personal fashion and nice clothes, in Israel, will in some ways reduce the stress levels compared to the fashionable countries, as you don’t have to worry about your clothes or style before you go in the street. Everyone looks like a clothing disaster and there is equality in this lack of vanity.
But then the culture will simply become vain in non-visual ways (in Israel – becoming snobby based on your school or your army service, etc).
African Americans have become the connoisseur nationality of the USA. Many times I want to buy a product, when I watch the unboxing videos on YouTube – it is by African American YouTubers.
But does WASPs in New England care that much about whether you have nice Nikes? They must be equally vain and snobby, but they can operate this snobbery through institutions instead of Nikes.
During the 1960’s, in London anyway, the “mods” were very well know for their dedication to fashion. It was a very palpable movement that could be felt over here on the other side of the lake:
https://youtu.be/KXaO3zgaf5Q
I don’t think it’s that way anymore.
People don’t realize how much of a fluke the British colonization of India was.
India was not that backward in terms of military tech.Pre industrial era Indian steel was the best in the world and Indian artillery routinely outranged European artillery(It suffered from a very poor rate of fire and lack of standardization though).
Then there were things like metal cased rockets which were reverse engineered by the British into Congreve rockets.
Indian shipbuilding firms would routinely build and sell warships to the British.The US national anthem was composed aboard one such ship i.e. the HMS Miden.
So the technological base of India was more than adequate to assimilate European technology and India had (and still has) more gold than all of Europe combined so the hard currency to pay for European arms and expertise.
The biggest power after the collapse of the Mughals was the Martha Empire which was modernizing with French expertise and had defeated the British in the first Anglo Martha War.
Alternate history is a pointless exercise but there are any number of viable scenarios of the Martha military modernization being completed 1-2 decades earlier and the British being permanently removed from India.
Indian states had previously defeated the Portuguese,French and Dutch attempts at establishing themselves beyond their small enclaves at their expense it was entirely possible even likely that the British would meet a similar fate had the Marathas began their military modernization even a decade earlier.
I just carry a 35L pack with 2 extra pouches.
I got gloves, vest & scarf in side pocket.
Socks, power bank, poncho & boot polish inside.
A few Litres of water and food as needed.
Enough room for a few days of clothes & extras।।
People should at least do one of two things: dress really well or have a great body. Those who do neither don’t know what they are missing out on. Other people will be far more responsive to you, in every country, if you fulfill one of these.
And everyone should be able to wear clean clothes. Extremely poor third worlders who smash their clothes with rocks in the river are able, so there’s very little excuse not to as well
“I don’t care about clean clothes” is a reasonable argument, but no one can really claim to not care about being treated more warmly and with more respect by strangers.
Marathas could’ve just not pissed off everyone in the NW and also taken their advice – No defeat at Panipat and no Christians in Asia or Muslims till Turkey then.
I’m satisfied with the current timeline, it’s Guru’s ਹੁਕਮ।।
This makes the present Gandhian and disarmed state of India even more pathetic।।
The Crown jewel of BharatVarsha is the Farla worn by a Nihang Singh।।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
https://twitter.com/jvalaaa/status/1314307436547723264?s=20
https://www.manglacharan.com/post/salok-dumallay-da-translation
The British had already gone well beyond that though once they had hijacked Bengal with its tax revenues and military resources. My impression is that the general view is it would have taken a coalition of Indian states and a coordinated effort to expel them again (iirc there were even some attempts at this, but mostly the British were able to pick off one enemy at a time, annexing territories of defeated enemies and former allies and thereby steadily increasing their resource advantage). But I agree with you, things could easily have gone differently, 18th century Indian states were far from primitive.
The most they have is Ron DeSantis. Which is far from enough so far, but possibly many Republicans can switch their side.
What American populists want is a popular revolution, that is something more akin to Maoist strategy of a rural powerbase with minimal but effective leadership. They thought the original American revolutionaries were also of this kind, but reading the Freemason membership among them (the leadership) suggests otherwise – those are colonial elites leading the insurrection.
In all fairness, I don’t think this is correct. Modern people are just much taller and bigger on average.
They did probably have quicker reactions, though.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/da/46/a1da46c64e92eec0caa1145a9ebe011a.jpg
You can do better that “Air Jordans”, even 10th generation:
https://youtu.be/w9ON_xbwuqs
James Bond 1965 “Thunderball”
Did you even read that article? The evidence presented there for “nuances” is that the council of Chalcedon relaxed the requirements for penance after an abortion, that Theodora’s most bitter enemies accused of her using contraception and abortion while was an “actress” and before she was an Empress and later a saint (“Yes”), and that contraception and abortion were described in early Byzantine medical manuals, from which we can conclude that the Byzantines sometimes used them. The Byzantines also fornicated, sodomized, and murdered, so the pre-modern Christian attitude toward such practices must have been someone nuanced…
You are not a retard. Why write like one?
Thanks for telling us there can be some sort of “elite” class prepared to take over Bolshevik-style (in terms of post-revolutionary elite composition, not ideologies)
Sounds like a good project for Effective Altruism: train a robot to identify the trans-peacocks who are most oppressed by the extreme gender norms of peacockdom and help them transition by pulling out their tail-feathers. The proceeds from the sales of the feathers can then be used to buy mosquito nets for Africans.
More seriously, I was focusing on the arms race aspect of hyper-fancy clothing rather than its femininity, since I think the former is the driving force, while the latter is arguably present but merely a side-effect. In most animals, it is males competing for the attention of females, and accordingly, most other species exhibit greater sexual dimorphism than humans. And in that context, the arms race in fancy appearance or behavior is inevitable.
Humans, however, differ in a few ways. First, because of the very large investment a female must put into a child, it is more important for her to attract not just a strong mate, but also a reliable mate, and so it is worth her time to compete with other females for the attention of such mates. Thus we see both men and women taking great care of appearance and behavior. Second, because of the complex web of social norms in human societies, it is possible to develop caps on arms races and to use more subtle signals of desirability, which are often more visible to the parents of the young couple than to the couple themselves. Arguably, in a society in which there is a strong expectation that a man will take care of his legitimate wife and children, a young woman’s– or a young woman’s father’s– best bet for ensuring her children are provided for is to mate with the highest status man that she can find, and the signs of such status are not necessarily flashy.
As for femininity, in humans it is often associated with neoteny. There are a million studies on this question, the first of which coming to hand is
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744016
So it seems females are selected for neoteny (a young woman is a fertile woman).
Conversely, note that the races ranked by male neoteny would seem to be black < white < yellow, and the same ranking holds in reverse order for flashiness in behavior and dress. I suspect this is not a coincidence. I also suspect that the same ranking holds for level of sexual dimorphism within the races, but I don't know how to quantify that.
One way or another, though, the incentives and norms for flashy behavior and dress are determined by a combination of culture and biology, the two evolving together. All of this suggests that in a given culture and race, it might very well make sense to associate flashy dress as more or less masculine or feminine.
As the Root Abrahamic, I think Dmitry inherently thinking of conversion; in which case he’s correct||
Quantum communism:
https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0510238
LMAO, as the kids say.
The British took over Bengal after the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
The skirmishes with the Maratha Empire started around that time before 1757 and the first full blown Anglo Martha War which the British lost started in 1775.
At the time European concepts of war of volley fire drum and muskets and standardized artillery with a few standardized rounds for the entire army was just beginning to enter the Maratha Army on an experimental basis but was met with stiff resistance with people who were skeptical of its effectiveness.
At the end of the first Maratha War everyone was convinced of the value of these innovations unfortunately because of the succession crisis in the Maratha Empire the focus and political will required to reorganize the entire army wasn’t there and the results of the second and third anglo maratha wars were catastrophic for the Empire.
If the Maratha Empire modernized its army in the twenty years between the 1st and 2nd Anglo Maratha wars it would be the end of the British in India as its army was at the end of the day 95% mercenaries under British command with nowhere near the fighting spirit of the Marathas who in the same century had pulverized the Mughals in 40 battles fighting with a fanaticism that shocked Muslims in multiple theaters.
Maybe if the Marathas lost the first Anglo Maratha war it wouldn’t be as catastrophic and would force them to modernize the army within a decade.
An analogy here is Peter the Great’s Russia loosing to Sweden at Narva but because of that shock focused on root and branch modernization of the army which went on to win the Great Northern War.
Had they triumphed at Narva they may have not have seen Sweden under Charles XII as an existential threat and not prioritized military reforms to the extent they did and lost the Great Northern War in the end.
There is no end to Alternate history.
My two pennyworth. Note the reference to Russia as this is a Russian blog.
Siraj ud Daulah’s primary enemy was not the East India Company. He was in revolt against the Sultan whose authority was in decline across the Mughal Empire, the position of Nawab being that of an hereditary administrator. The Nawab was also stealing from and fighting the rest of his family. He was looting the property of the merchant classes. (insecurity of private property was a key difference between the economies of NW Europe and India-discouraged capital investment and banking). His main interest in the British in Calcutta was a higher share of the customs duties sent to Delhi and the recapture of family members who had fled there. In Bengali accounts, the General Mir Jaffa is portrayed as a traitor to the Nawab but he can equally be read as a loyalist to the Sultan who has no one left to speak for him. The East India Company acknowledged the Sultan as their ruler/lawmaker for another 34 years after Plassey.
The accident of the Nawab’s revolt led to Plassey and thus the (overgenerous?) award of land and other rights in Bengal to the East India Company and Mir Jaffa. Without the Nawab, The lack of secure private property and a system for banking rather than moneylending would still have remained. The Indian states would not have competed economically with Europe. Indian history would have dominated by the French and there would be an even bigger patchwork of separate countries where the pieces of India now stand unless Napoleon unified it beforehand.
Russia would still have conquered Central Asia perhaps even larger parts of Afghanistan than it actually did. “The Great Game” is a later Russian invention to justify their conquest and tribute taking in Central Asia which was going to happen anyway. Even without the British in the way, Russia would not have had the capacity to reach India proper.
lol, come on, I’m obviously not into white guilt etc., but these justifications for British imperialism (“lack of security for trade”, “If the British hadn’t taken over, the French would have done so – and presumably they would have been worse!”) are ridiculous. The point of conflict between the nawab of Bengal and the EIC was that the latter enjoyed a highly privileged position through their customs exemptions (and iirc they claimed privileges beyond what had actually been granted to them by the Mughals), which impeded the state-building process the nawab was engaged in…therefore the nawab’s attempt to redress the balance. Reducing the matter to arbitrary oriental despotism misses the point.
A teenage boy (Romeo) crying all day because a girl he loved rejected him doesn’t seem very outlandish, just a bit dramatic. Well, he is Italian. What do you think about the protagonist in White Nights? A more Russian approach. Moreover, I’m not sure that the behaviors of such characters necessarily reflects typical behaviors. How many 19th century young educated Russians were killing their neighborhood moneylenders with axes?
Or all Nihangs including ones sitting in Jamrud Kila near Khyber rolling up through Sindh to start a general insurgency against the British.
Most of the EIC army was in Punjab so it wouldn’t even be hard to revive Pindaris at that pt||
In the end we survived, and worst case is all Eurasians are reduced to 1% against a Bantu Horde||
Will have to fight to reconquer everything, what good fortune!
https://sikhunity.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/1604409_10202150703388945_4909857465544636734_n.jpg
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
Honestly, I think I can say that’s the dumbest article I’ve ever read in the category of pro-abortion lies and propaganda directed at Christians. And I’ve read quite a few — I like to know what these people are arguing. But at least have the decency to quote and misapply Aquinas! Instead of Aquinas, this article is serving up some Byzantine medical manuals and a 16th-century Ethiopian text.
I would however go to a more universal source than Aquinas, such as the canons of the Ecumenical Councils. If you don’t like Christian teaching on abortion, then just reject it.
Didn’t realize Hour of the Dragon was the last Howard story. Unofficial, but I see some fan has estimated his age then at 46.
Haven’t read them all, but next, I want to try to track down his female protagonist stories. I understand that Red Sonja is a lot different than the movie, so I have more interest in the other one, to try to test his identification as a feminist. Supposedly, both characters were based on his girlfriend or something.
Right now, am reading an amusing super-science pulp with a Yellow Peril theme. “Armageddon – 2419 AD.” I have the idea that pulps are the highest cultural manifestation of testosterone ever-produced, so they were concerned with things like group defense and ethnocentrism, in a way that never really manifested in other mediums. From Burroughs, to Howard, to many other writers.
Would be quite interesting to do physiognomy of pulp writers. Burroughs got pretty old, but I suspect many of the others were young like Howard, and probably high T besides. Maybe, it takes T to be prolithic, or to stand in the face of rejection.
This isn’t right — the Christian position hardened in response to the scientific finding that a zygote is a genetically unique individual, no longer part of the father or the mother. That, together with the finding that fetal development is basically continuous — quickening does not mark a true, observable step-change when the fetus springs to life — really strengthened the “from conception” position and basically killed the old debates about moments of “ensoulment”.
Any other cut-off is arbitrary, and consciousness itself is a fuzzy and poorly-understood phenomenon. Are infants really conscious in the same way I am? They presumably lack an internal dialogue and won’t retain memories.
After finishing 2 books edited by Karl-Heinz Ohlig I’ll start Robert Spencer’s Did Muhammad Exist? which is a popular treatment on the question on the founding of Islam.
The biggest hole in Revisionist School of Islamic Studies’ thesis is Chinese historical records, which are largely interpreted as reflecting the traditional historiography.
I’m not referring to the second half of the article about abortion, but the first half of the article on the views towards natality and reproduction. It describes a twisting we know well from the 21st century:
“The earliest Christian writings – the letters of the Apostle Paul – discouraged marriage and reproduction. Later Christian texts supported these teachings.”
“According to the Christian text titled the Acts and Martyrdom of Eugenia, Eugenia rejected marriage and led a male monastery for a time. Afterward, she discouraged Alexandrian women from having children, but this advice angered their husbands. These men convinced the emperor Gallienus that Eugenia’s teachings about women’s reproductive choice endangered Rome’s military power by reducing the “supply” of future soldiers. Eugenia was executed in 258 A.D.”
“Even as the Roman Empire became increasingly Christian, women still received praise for avoiding marriage. For example, the bishop Gregorios of Nyssa, an ancient city near Harmandalı, Turkey, wrote the beautiful text Life of Makrina to celebrate his beloved sister and teacher, who died in 379 A.D.”
Gallienus was not Christian but his position sounds quite familiar to our 21st century ears:
https://tass.ru/obschestvo/7016588
Lol you’re writing to me like AP, after I once had compared Ukraine’s GDP with Namibia.
Christian positions on abortion relation to murder hasn’t really “hardened” since the 7th century.
https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/4117/2/Davies13PhD.pdf (“Michael Gorman and Spyros Troianos have already noted how in third-century Roman law, abortion was not treated as murder but focused upon deception of the father. In the seventh century, Christian Law changed the penalty for abortion. The Council in Trullo, which met in 692, decided that ‘abortion’ (τά ἀμβλωθρίδια) constituted ‘murder’ (φόνος).” )
The issue for Christian position on this moral philosophy question is the timing of “ensoulment”. Of course, “ensoulment” has been viewed as the moment of consciousness.
Moment of consciousness or soul is not determined by the genetic content of the zygote – as identical twins have the same genetic content, but two different souls or consciousness.
Similarly if a scientist cloned you, and then killed you, then your soul would not transfer to the new body.
In the Christian view that led to equivalence of abortion with murder, “ensoulment” was hypothesized at the moment of conception.
But at that time there was no knowledge about the timing of the preconditions (neurological development) for the emergence of consciousness, which we know is not present in earliest pregnancy, but may be present in later pregnancy.
–
There is also a concept that abortion has been legally viewed as a form of sexual immorality in women. In the canonical text of Corithians, the view had been that ideally there should be celibacy instead of marriage, but as a second best option (for men who cannot control there desires) there should be marriage. In this context, abortion would seem to imply an example of the third option of desire which was not controlled (which is sex outside marriage).
The view of abortion murder (rather than a result of merely uncontrolled desire between a man and a woman he was not married to) has become the predominant one historically, and this is based on a view of timing of the “ensoulment” of the fetus towards conception.
Hero of the story begins the text locked in his room crying for days, because a girl rejected him – this is what by the late 19th century would be viewed as female hysteria, but in Shakespeare it will not have a male/female connotation, and for his audience it doesn’t disqualify Romeo as a heroic character.
Moreover, the other characters including Benvolio, etc, all seem to agree with Romeo’s romantic moods.
By the 20th century writers like Ernest Hemingway, such behaviour would be viewed the opposite of an ideal masculinity; but in Shakespeare it doesn’t have a male/female designation, and it can be at the beginning of the story without destroying Romeo’s heroic status.
Of course this is just the beginning of the text, and there are many dozens of other culture shocks in Romeo Juliet, and far more in his other writing.
People who read more often of these Shakespeare texts (than I do) will know far more examples like this, and much stronger ones are in Shakespeare.
https://i.imgur.com/hnjJKXP.jpeg
The high point of the weekend, in several different ways. Easy ascent but a solitary and strenuous climb, no signs of humans in miles. I found a couple of bristlecone pines that were possibly alive before any European had set foot in these regions. It will be difficult to make the feelings of serenity and accomplishment last through the working week but one has to try.
I’m curious about how you adapted your SUV to sleep inside. I guess I would have chosen a truck for that purpose, more space for a proper bed and a kitchenette. I probably will in the future. But an SUV must give you more agility and better mileage.
Besides, of course, the loss of genetic content without an organism with neurological activity, will be irrelevant (whereas a clone that had neurological activity is a separate person).
An early zygote without neurological activity, will not be conscious. The fact it might represent a particular genetic combination, does not add to its status as a person, beyond the gametes that were used, and their combination possibilities. You can fertilize infinite combinations of eggs in a laboratory, and the genetic recombination is not more of a person than the two gametes that were entered for combination.
The moral problem with abortion is that it could be killing a conscious organism in the womb (during late pregnancy), who is experiencing pain and effectively an execution. It’s not a question of the genetic combinations, but the killing of something that is experiencing consciousness.
I can believe this.
Some people have a tendency to assume the CCP is super-humanly intelligent and even its stupid moves are part of some 40-year long game of 4D chess. I’m convinced that, at best, it’s just better than our own crappy governments in certain specific ways, and worse in others.
Fertility is also a real blind spot for people, and I imagine China isn’t that different. The West is so ignorant in thinking about fertility that China can be vastly better at it and yet still be entirely unable to come up with a solution.
The truth is that human beings have never thought their way out of a fertility crisis before, and I don’t think we’re about to start now, in the West or in China. Fertility will ultimately be restored incidentally, by people whose primary focus is not restoring fertility.
I think pop culture is a necessary evil in that you can’t force high IQ stuff on everyone, and you need to have a culture of the masses for intergroup competition. (Though it should employ moral censors.) Otherwise, you will find yourself like the Zentradi in Macross, totally at the mercy of someone else’s pop culture.
IMO, Euros are getting owned now, because they made the major strategic blunder of failing to gatekeep a cohesive culture. For example, I have watched Hollywood movies with Germans. They were all subversive in one way or another. Some had black characters shown in a favorable light. Others were degenerate. But I wonder how many understood that by 1970, you couldn’t be a star with a German name (unless you changed it). Most likely none.
This guy obviously thought otherwise ant still became a star:
https://i.imgur.com/EEcqgp4.jpeg
The densest (and happens also to be the wealthiest) province, Jiangsu, is same population as Germany but 3.5 denser, 803 vs 233 / km sq
Netherlands is densest in Europe at 457 / km sq, still less dense than all the main coastal rich provinces
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183370/china-population-density-by-region-province/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Mikel that image is awesome.
I have similar shots from CA where I used to live. I moved to CO a few weeks ago and I am just now getting adjusted enough to the altitude that I am ready for baby climbs now, nothing quite like this quite yet but soon!
Do you have a favorite online information source for choosing new routes?
A girl working on her laptop while riding bike
https://imgur.com/EZzWV2J
This is being called 内卷 Involution*, as oppose to evolution: when a system increases in complexity but does not improve in efficiency and productivity. So there is some self-awareness of these “hard work inflation” problems.
But the answer I’m pretty sure is not more people in China.
*Etymology: Kant’s Critique of Judgement
According to the theory of epigenesis, an individual organism does not come fully formed in an embryo, but rather its germ contains only the formative power to form itself in its material environment.
An organism develops into something new through its life activity viewed as an interaction of the specific form (germs or potentialities belonging to a given species) and the environment, moved and guided by a “formative drive” Bildungstrieb.
The rival theory is “individual preformation” or Involutionstheorie.
Arnold’s career path was a bit different because he won Mr. Universe multiple times, though it is true that a lot of his mentors were Jewish. And what I would consider his first big film was with Milius. I believe him more the exception to the rule because he had a novelty: big muscles. And if you look at other guys like Ferrigno, they were really terrible actors. He is also an exceptional self-promoter and a donor to Jewish causes. Imagine, if he was a donor to German causes.
But see this:
When he was cast, Braeden was still using his birth name, Hans Gudegast. Universal Pictures executive Lew Wasserman told him that no one would be allowed to star in an American film if they had a German name. Thus, Colossus: The Forbin Project became the first production in which he started using “Eric Braeden” as his stage name.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
It is not me saying this. It is Lew Wasserman, and, if anyone knows, it should be a big studio mogul, like him.
Yes sir. It might be a bit outdated in these GPS days but my source for new route information is this: https://www.summitpost.org/
OK, so going back to this discussion, this is all a bit like saying that Big Tech is promoting the existence of communities of pedophiles.
To the extent that search engines continue functioning as search engines and that websites use trackers for commercial purposes, yes, that may be partially true. But you cannot ignore the fact that all big Silicon Valley corporations also try to clamp down on that kind of material. So, insofar it still happens (not much these days, I would say), it is pretty much against their expressed will that people with Trumpist sympathies use their algorithms to form communities and organize themselves.
It is also a quite ironic that you use a video produced by a very partisan mass media organization, which itself contains visible elements of indoctrination, to show how people get indoctrinated on the internet.
Moreover, I don’t find it likely that Biden won the elections through fraud but the idea is far less implausible than what may appear from Europe. There are things in the US that are quite dysfunctional and federal elections are conducted in a very idiosyncratic way. Suffice to say that no effective ID verification is carried out, which is hard to imagine in Western Europe. More to the point, there were hundreds of claims of fraud, some of them credible in my view, that were never investigated. They were just dismissed out of hand in lower courts so people started to get very angry. As a matter of fact, Big Tech was essential in the events of Jan 6th but not in the way you described. They added massively to people’s frustration through censorship and suppression of facts.
It is just incorrect to think that it was all simply a “big lie”. Many Trump supporters are hopelessly naive, no doubt, but the “big lie” narrative is itself a lie.
Those who rules us are witting and unwitting servants of the Daemonic.
Impressive in its evil, really, intended and not.
It seems you’ll forever take people’s offhand comments if they support your preconceptions and never look at what actually happens.
The origin of the word daemonic is not in “evil.” You make a very big mistake in assuming so.
Hig density explains a large part of low fertility thru the lack of physical space!
Organically developed folk culture is far superior to modern industrialized pop culture, and I have never said high culture should be forced on anyone.
This is the meta Big Lie. There need not to be a coordinated effort to censor, just the right culture and environment for individual actors (Big Tech and wokists included) to target the right people. Because sharing a common ideological conviction (e.g. Communists, Freemasons) is far more effective than a centralized Master Plan to effect colossal changes.
Triteleia Laxa:
It doesn’t matter what Daemons are in Greek Mythology. You just need to look at cultural influences on the current elite.
Thank you that looks very very good!
“For example, peak force was 16 percent greater and total energy absorbed was 37 percent greater in the furred compared to the plucked samples.”
The researchers view this as evidence of natural selection in favour of growing a beard, pointing out that other animals – like the lion
https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-my-bushy-beard-evolved-so-you-can-safely-punch-me-in-the-head
https://twitter.com/amaanbali/status/1435268226686992387?s=20
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
Thank you, commenters, for the photos of mountains. Coleridge’s advice to his son Hartley…”A life close to nature, my boy!” Now, as people in the US abandon cities, I think of this; I hope they can adapt their citified sensibilities. Coleridge, from “Frost at Midnight”:
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds….
TRUMP 2024
https://twitter.com/SeaRespecter/status/1435458823162982401?s=20
The French could positively influenced Indian cuisine.
Oh, no. I well know the origins of the term, and even its wider understanding in the occult context. The thing is…if I speak of a “Daemon” while trying to speak of a Tibetan understanding of a terrifying but overall positive entity who can help uplift people or a genuinely helpful thought form I have manifested or techy village guardian, they won’t get it, and more importantly, with the wait of manifestation, I might be corrupting it by terming it such, or encouraging the foolish to engage any “Daemonic” entity, thinking the term carries less weight than it does.
With our Greco-Roman Christian Warhammer background though, we all know THE DAEMONIC in the sense of THE DEMON, and it has a certain powerful weight, doesn’t it? Rather than saying black and evil spirits or “dark forces.”
To say one is fighting the forces of evil and the Daemonic helps focus the mind, even if the deeper levels can appreciate the understanding that, technically, an Angel or a visiting spirit (neutral or not) or even a forest entity could technically be considered Daemonic in line with traditional thought.
Ha ha, these people though are certainly serving outside (Daemonic) interests, in return for promised power or not. It also happens these Daemons are the evil kind. Of course, how many did they themselves make?
Update on nigger belt and EDC pack situation:
7×5″ German AP nade pouches for belt & pack. the 6×4 one too small, now GP/sock kit.
OD 6×3″ Alice pouch for Belt first aid. <3 Old school Spanish fasteners, silent & sturdy.
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/VyjT3fh
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/885067908085080085/facebook1.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/885068043955343380/thequint2F2017-112Fd0c794a7-12be-4a11-b9c2-ef3fb7c4a4a92F51b34d2f-e337-4868-8201-33be99c391c8.png
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
Yellow man’s burden.
Perhaps Africa is better off this way.
But I hope that the Chinks have learned from the mistakes of the English and French and don’t allow their colonial subjects to flow back into China. Even Russia has too many African “students”. Apparently the beauty of Russian women outweighs the fear of frost-bite.
No, it doesn’t focus the mind. It f*cks the mind. You’re not fighting any such thing. To continue your metaphor, you’re constantly seeing The Demon instead of the Daemons that actually exist.
Your contention seems to be that no harm has come to Euros from not keeping a cohesive culture.
Your position is obviously ridiculous on its face. Culture is an organizing tool. What the West has now is a culture of diversity. (Even putting the J-question aside). As the problems of Euros grow in significance, they just happen to become a smaller and smaller part of it, and always in fear of other parts, so it becomes increasingly less likely that they will be able to solve or even address those problems, through the key tool of culture.
Do you think it helps the well-being of Germans to always be the villains, in movies and video games? And do you think that is an organic result? That they would chose it, if they were able to look out for their own interests? Well, what is odd is the Japanese seem to have a somewhat friendlier attitude towards them.
I quite like folk culture.
And what’s more, I think with music, it is possible to see a dividing line between organic folk acts, and organized or “produced” ones. The “produced” ones are often unpleasant listening because you can hear the “production.”
I see no reason why organic folk could not be promoted. But I do think you need something more than music. I think you need vidya, and it has to be more than just live acts. A movie is often a thing of great complexity and neccesarily needs some planning and artifice.
I understand your narrative. The problem for you is that it does not conform with basic reality. Reality is that Western societies have never been so peaceful, organised and prosperous.
This makes unuanced arguments like your “obviously ridiculous” one look completely mad.
No, I think it really hurts their feelings and I take that very seriously.
You don’t take it seriously. You pretend it is about the apocalypse.
The progressives don’t take it seriously, because then they would realise they were the hurtful brutes they claim to stand against, so they stick their fingers in their ears and ignore it.
However, looking at the situation, I can’t help but notice that the progressives are unlikely to take it seriously until those with hurt feelings can actually bring themselves to admit it. The progressives cannot be expected to be mind-readers.
A123 brought us something worthy of attention on China’s stock market – Evergrande is colossal enough to drag enough Chinese commercial banks down and precipitate a crisis on the level of 2007-08 with Lehman Brothers.
Surely there will be a big fallout from the failure of Evergrande. It could easily trigger a “Lost Decade” in China. But contrary to Sinophobes, the impact on CCP’s rule will be on par the 2007-08 debacle’s on Obama, and why you should hope so:
1) Wall Street partly directs American domestic policies while the Party has dominance over Chinese financial economy.
2) China’s banking system, even while allowing local governments to inflate land bubbles, is more willing to prioritize the overall health of the national economy then using the imposition of austerity to predate on the heavily financialized segment of the population.
3) While the bankruptcy of a considerable part of the financial system will lead to some degree of civil unrest, socialist China has been thru much more deeply delegitimizing crises and survived (even if the ways those are dealt with have provided the West with propaganda material, and quite brutal!)
4) A stagnant market socialist China is preferable to China impoverished a la 90s Russia. And the collapse in the superpower potential of China will not pre-empt Western (and most eminently Japanese) aggressiveness, as we can see with Putin’s Russia. It has become cultural and grown independent of state ideological orientation.
Eh, it doesn’t throw me off (I get along great with good or…neutral things) but I get what you’re saying.
A person should appreciate the forest spirits, but also avoid calling things through blood magic (maybe there is a time and place, but for anything not evil, those times are rare.) It’s easier for novices to end up dealing with something dark.
Phoenix on the Dagger is repurposed from another character but technically it is the last Conan story. Of course, all he does in it is brood and get a team of assassins sent against him. I suppose it’s more of an “old man surprises murderers by his continuing vigor” rather than a proper adventure.
I always found it amusing how Conan, now having to deal with realistic concerns of governance, is ever more frustrated by the lack of simple solutions.
His female protagonists are impressive for women but still very female; they murder other women for jealousy, they aren’t matched vs top male fighters, etc. They are notable for their spirit and inspirational qualities.
Its good that fluffies are generally so incapable, because their ability to be stupid is truly astounding.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/01/british-teen-allegedly-killed-two-sisters-in-blood-pact-with-devil-to-win-the-lottery/
Thanks for the pic, it’s great!
I can well imagine the feeling of exhilaration standing there, buffeted by high winds, cold, thin air, the intense, golden sunlight of high places, and the satisfied exhaustion of the climb!
High altitude mountains have a feeling to them that is indescribable and completely magical – no picture can ever recreate that for someone who hasn’t been to such places.
For myself, True Life starts at 4,000 feet minimum 🙂 Over the years during my travels, I began to notice that I felt especially exuberant and invigorated – and spiritual – in certain places, where the air and light felt different. Curious, I looked into it – and found they were all above 4,000 feet 🙂 I think optimum for me, is between 8,000-10,000 feet to live, and higher for the exhilaration 🙂
The swampy miasma of NYC, with it’s unbearably hot, muggy, summers – the anti-spiritual city par excellence!
That’s great – I love that kind of thing!
That’s the challenge isn’t it? To carry the magic over into our boring and mundane lives – it’s too bad the world is organized so that we have to make these kinds of choices!
Imagine if work would be as good as wandering mountains – may it become that way 🙂
I considered a truck initially, something like an F-150, but they have to have the long bed to be feasible, and are just so huge – it would be hard to find parking in NYC!
And with my long drive every trip, gas mileage is a consideration.
Finally, the car market now – across the country but it seems especially in NYC – is just terrible! A month of searching I could not find a good car at a decent price from an honest seller!
After a month of searching, I gave up on getting exactly what I wanted.
As for sleeping arrangements, I basically removed the back seats – so I have no back seats. I considered removing the front passenger seat as well, but it wasn’t necessary.
I was initially going to do a cool build-out with wood paneling etc, but then in keeping with my Taoist ways I ended keeping it simple – or maybe just in keeping with my innate laziness and impatience to get on the road 🙂
So all I basically did was throw a 4 inch memory foam mattress in the back, and some cushion padding by my feet to “even” things out. That’s it! I use plastic containers to organize my gear.
It’s extremely basic and simple, but I’ve been supremely comfortable sleeping this way! I’ve been out three weeks, and haven’t even had any real desire to get a hotel yet – which is weird, usually I itch for a nice hotel after ten days or so.
Well, at the moment I’m here in magnificent Canyonlands NP, at 6,000 feet – the mornings and evenings are deliciously cool, and only midday is hot – but very comfortable in shade. I’m rght next to Arches and the La Sal Mountains. I should be here until the 25th unless I get restless – wonderful exploring, canyons, and mountains, fot two and a half weeks.
I may do a 14er on my way home driving through Colorado – I hope to! And I want to post more photos too, but all I have now is my shitty cell phone cam.
Thanks for your pics and trip report, Mikel.
This is way more consequential than anything else you can say about the Democrats. Why haven’t anyone seriously considered this?
Were Cromwellian laws (not anything specific, but even trivial ones enacted during the English Commonwealth) repealed wholesale during the Restoration? And the Napoleonic Code continued to be in effect during and after the Bourbon restoration.
Your “fluffy” seems to have been an Iraqi Muslim who had decided to murder a lot of women, and solely women. What are the chances that he was raised to an ideology that projected evil out everywhere until his own illusion consumed him?
It is in a sense evil, isn’t it – devastatingly harmful spiritually and physically – this excessive overreliance on the artificial and technological in all areas of our life.
But although the way technology is utilized in the modern world has often – perhaps on the whole – been very harmful, properly integrated into a holistic whole it can be quite benign.
Evil, I believe, is when one element begins to take over the whole – grow out of it’s natural place – like a cancer.
For instance, one of the supreme experiences the modern world has to offer is to drive in a car – preferably a larger or older one, not a cramped modern “aerodynamic” one with small windows – at very high speeds with all windows rolled down, across a wide open and beautiful landscape – like the American West, or perhaps the Mongolian Steppes or the Sahara Desert 🙂 – at high speeds.
This is a new and improved version of Samuel Johnson’s famous quip that the best pleasure in life is to drive fast in a carriage with a pretty girl at ones side 🙂 If he only knew what possibilities in this vein the future would open up!
But my point is, technology can enhance life.
But when you let cars dominate, and for instance cities are built for cars and not for humans and liveability – then you have evil, and psychological, spiritual, and physical ill health.
A world in which cities are charming, small scale, human centred, medieval, with no cars allowed – and cars are parked in garages at city edges or underground (preferably) and only used to fly through beautiful countryside outside cities – would be a world where technology is properly integrated.
It is the worship of technology – elevating it into a God – that is evil.
But you make a good point by describing what is happening as evil – and as being about selling the soul for power.
Because that’s why Big Business and it’s facilitators destroy the world – power, money, etc.
And what is at the root of a desire for Power – what metaphysics, what view of self and world? Until we understand that, we can change things.
And finally, it is a remarkable fact that the more wealthy, intelligent, and cultured a person is, the more he wants the natural and imaginative and not the artificial and scientific.
And it’s in all areas of life – in the West today, you will pay a heavy premium to live in old houses in old neighborhoods.
What a medieval farmer took for granted, a beautiful and charming cottage, mere beauty and charm, our birthright, is now – in the Great Age of Science – a luxury good.
Dmitry would say this is mere status signalling- but he himself knows this isn’t true. Dmitry wonderfully describes the old neighborhoods of London as looking like they were “built by elves”, and as charming and beautiful. He knows they speak to his soul – not his utilitarian desire for status.
Something worth pondering…
Demons wear many guises, but fluffies are idiots everywhere.
Yellowface Anon,
“Evergrande is colossal enough to drag enough Chinese commercial banks down and precipitate a crisis on the level of 2007-08 with Lehman Brothers.”
That’s not possible… Just “sell” their bad debts to the 4 big AMC, the banks would be fine. It’s not like this haven’t been done before in the 90s.
Since the banks and the AMC all owned by China’s biggest capitalist SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), which holds equivalent to about 67 trillion USD in assets (with a debt-asset ratio of 68%), Evergrande is a very small peanut.
This displays not only lack of long-term vision but also hilarious statistical blindness.
https://xrv281o3wvu1d29sd405vdf6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-16-The-U-S-has-an-affordable-housing-crisis-Here%E2%80%99s-why-850×449.png
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FT_18.07.26_hourlyWage_adjusted.png
https://blog.insurify.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/national-suicide-trends.png
The Uber focus is like someone at the end of Western Rome saying, “We have public welfare now! We’ve never lived so well! We have so many sports!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
Your second graph has a similar problem, but it also misses the point about so much other stuff. Despite what old people like to grumble about, the vast majority of things we spend our money on are much higher in quality than they were before. Houses are far bigger, restaurant food is far superior, even supermarket food has improved, on average, markedly in recent decades. Never mind computers, the range and choice in entertainment and the fact that an ever increasing proportion of our activity, like posting here, does not even get counted as economic, despite it being miraculous by the standards of a few decades ago.
The increase in the suicide rate is awful, but suicide is a very complicated subject. It has risen by 50% since 1999. This is a big deal, but given that black South African suicide rates are lower than black American, can we really infer that higher suicide rates mean a more like to collapse society?
The “deaths of despair” phenomenon certainly points to a crisis, but making it about the society writ likely means you’re going to miss its key points. Opiates are numbing, suicide is very numbing, why do more and more Americans want to be numb?
There are so many reasons, but I find it very interesting how these opiates have risen in use just as the previous “opiate of the masses” declined in use. This is a problem, but new problems arise and learning societies adjust to deal with them. I see plenty of reason to think that America will adjust very well.
Have you been under a rock in the last 1 1/2 years?
“We have so many more sports and so much more public welfare now! Life has never been better! There’s even free public housing for people!”
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23905.jpeg
I have no idea what “capital” you mean in this case, but Americans certainly aren’t getting more “services, goods and other forms of compensation” from their labor(or welfare, as that might be):
https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2014/07/28/workplace-benefits-that-are-disappearing
Most of the fancy Silicon Valley benefits went away by 2014 too; I would know, I participated in those.
Anyway, waste of time to continue. Its probably a good thing for victims of the globohomo to ostrich as such, a pity for those who have to fall with them though.
For a while, I hoped they would make a movie like that with Schwarzenegger. Something where he would not be lopping off a hundred heads, as a sex- or septuagenarian. But where the muscle would be his underlings, and he would have to show wisdom and leadership.
Probably, it was not even close to what they had planned.
Yes, a moderately lethal disease perhaps leaked out of a Chinese laboratory.
China, along with North Korea and Cuba, immediately demonstrated the advantages of authoritarianism, which are marked in a war or similar crisis. It was impressive.
Developed liberal countries were at a disadvantage, as they always when such events happen.
Rich countries used their luxurious position of being able to pay people to stay at home.
Poorer countries didn’t and so many of their people likely died, though they also didn’t pay for tests so no one will ever be sure.
A huge number of incredible vaccines were developed in a very short time with remarkable effectiveness.
Things are going back to normal and living standards actually look like they’ll actually have increased!
There’ll be new problems in the future, but there are always new problems. A country’s resilience isn’t shown by never having new problems, but in how they adapt to them and overcome them. A highly infectious disease is very difficult for a country to deal with that is hesitant to restrict people’s liberty. It was, therefore, dealt with mediocrely by countries that are relatively hesitant in this way.
Manic libertarians look at these restrictions and concoct some story of them being sent to the gulags. Authoritarians see it as a fundamental flaw in liberal societies. Both are massively overreacting and missing the point with their hysteria, repressed or otherwise.
A123,
Read some more Gordon Chang if it makes you happy…
Looking without seeing and hearing without listening.
Equities, properties and other sources of income that aren’t welfare or labour. Were you really incapable of understanding that? Eventually, we can hope, that almost all current functions of labour will be done by robots, software and other forms of capital. Indeed, we slowly progress to this point every year. This means that the balance of earnings will continually generate more and more through capital, making your previous graph more and more irrelevant.
You might allege that we have a distribution problem, but the democratic system is there to allow that to be solved, so if it becomes a big enough problem, it will.
As for the 2-year murder spike, this is bad, but it is an exception in a falling murder rate, as I am sure you are well aware.
As for “muh Rome”, almost everything about life is completely different now. Your analogy is tedious.
What A123 raises are legit concerns on over-financialization that needs to be addressed skillfully. I suggest the CCP leadership take the Michael Hudson pill, daily.
If they had been previously vulnerable, but not ideologically indoctrinated people – which were herded together by the algorithm into a kind of cult with mutual social pressure, and dispensed a constant supply of re-enforcing content, while removed structurally from exposure to the opposition content and “social pressure”. But this is what Big Tech is attaining, and most of it is the design of the system itself (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google are a kind of a machine for refeeding to people their own vomit, and deceives brain by removing social pressure from opposing sides – this is how the systems are being designed).
You can see the people trapped within bubbles created by this technology even write using their own terminology, which doesn’t make sense for people who were placed in a different position by the algorithms.
It’s possible or not. I guess you would have to be knowledgeable about the election reality in the USA to provide any assessment. But in the riots in Capitol, the people are believing that there is a secret coup, and that they will rewarded by the government for disrupting it (and even that they would not be punished for that reason).
It’s an complex and elaborate conspiracy theory, which required a lot of technology to create in a homogenous way across such a large group (thousands of people).
Of course, modern populations are nowadays incomprehensibly vast, so you can create zombie botnet flashmob armies in the streets, even by exploiting small fractions of percent of the population that has particular mental vunerabilities for these ideology.
Can you think of any other Hollywood star with a German name other than Schwarzenegger?
There was Johnny Weissmuller. He became a star before Hitler took power.
Only other fellow I can think of with a German name is Michael Biehn. Half-German. Pronounced like a WASP name. Only big movies with him were all with the goy James Cameron.
Seems to be a pretty low count, postwar, considering the number of Germans in America and abroad. Though, admittedly I don’t consider myself to be good at remembering the names of actors, generally not caring for celebrity.
Honestly, I find your contention that things have never been better to be bizarre.
Technology generally improves with time. Naturally, that brings a dividend. It will improve right until the time it stops improving, but it is silly to use that as an endorsement of any system. It is a ratchet within a ratchet, propelling us one way, while degeneracy is gathering more and more momentum in the opposite direction.
Peace? When was the last time the US mainland was invaded by a foreign military power? Or the UK? You seem to be assuming that peace is a result of the current regime or ideological processes going on, and we wouldn’t have it otherwise. That WW2 wasn’t enough for Europe. Not even with the A- or H -bombs. Spurious.
And anyway, peace is not a positive thing in every situation. Euros are being invaded and dispossessed. There is no status quo, the trends are all severely negative for their continued future. Much worse than anything in the Eastern Bloc post-Stalin, where the trends seemed positive.
I also find your use of the word “organized” strange. There has never been more graft, more trillions transferred from one people to others. That is the organization that I perceive. Other than that there is complexity, but hardly more organization. The CCP is using the burnt-out shell of American cities as propaganda. Detroit doesn’t look more organized to me, nor Philadelphia. Nor Bruessels or London or Paris or Birmingham or Dublin.
It really doesn’t matter what magical elf-equivalent are producing your outputs if your population isn’t getting it. Saying that a billion pegasi are producing more cars than doesn’t really mean that people actually are having more cars; much of this was papered over first with two-income households and later with with debt, but this isn’t really a solution, its just another form of robbing form the future.
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2019/05/09/Photos/NS/MW-HJ256_debt_g_20190509123903_NS.jpg
And your population gets things through buying things with income or getting them as part of benefits of citizenry or corporate membership. So yes, the problem nontrivially is “distribution” as it has been from the beginning of history, and the idea of democracy as a magical fetish that’ll solve all such problems is particularly silly because democracy almost by definition is terrible at solving financial problems: it fundamentally functions by elections, and thus emphasizes immediate spending to get votes(or to increase the friendly voter base, via immigration, for example) rather than solving structural issues. It is basically another form of robbing from the future.
This is the most exceptional vision of democracy as magic I’ve seen in awhile. Well done.
You may find my examples tedious, but that does not make them any less true.
There have been lots of Germanic actors. Perhaps not enough to assuage your feelings at not having enough representation? Or perhaps these actors have not been in roles that make you feel validated? Let me know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_Americans#Actors
This is what you see when you think you look at the world.
If you ever wonder why no one, even you, ever does more than talk cheaply about this and why their actions never match that hot air, perhaps you might question the direction of your gaze.
I hope your perspective serves you until that point! Just realise it isn’t because they’re lazy or stupid, it is because they are being serious but not literal, though they may not even be conscious of it.
Incomes are already much redistributed.
Clearly, democratic governments are very capable of redistribution and are extremely comfortable with it.
If the state of income inequality gets more unpopular, then those democratic governments will redistribute more.
This is hardly a radical observation.
It is a phenomenon that is constantly happening in democratic countries without any problems. It is pretty much the most normal operation of the modern democratic state.
That you think it is just impossible makes me want to get a lyre player, a shot of whiskey and a fainting couch for you.
No worries. Just keep believing in what you want to believe; after all, its evident that most average women don’t do so well with numbers and you are very average.
Reality will eventually catch up with you.
You have pointed me to a list with Vin Diesel, and lots of people without German names but who are fractionally German. I wish there was a LMAO button.
It is considered good form here to disclose one’s ethnicity. I believe you have hinted you are from the UK. Perhaps, you would care to tell us, when you or your folks moved there, if you are uncomfortable with being more specific?
Your endorsement of the status quo, with its pronounced negative trends for Euros seems to hint that you are a stakeholder in the mulicult vision of the West.
I can’t make sense of what you said.
I’d like to add that I think “representation” is a very pozzed word, and you are making the wrong inferences, if you think I want to star in some multicult Hollywood picture, or see people who look like me in multicult movies.
I thought I expressed myself more clearly than that: I would prefer that Euros were banned completely from Hollywood, leaving it for others to fight over.
What I want is a cohesive culture. I don’t even care if someone wants to make black Hamlet, or Jewish Hamlet, or multicult Hamlet. I just wish it were labeled clearly and distinctly from the real McCoy.
Not even for my personal consumption. I am happy to watch diversity-free non-Euro films, or old movies. But I think children deserve a cohesive culture, and it is morally wrong to rob them of one. That it is more than an abstraction, that it has tangible negative consequences, even beyond the target population.
Rutger Hauer also sounds very German-like, but he was Dutch tbf 🙂
You’re using “cohesive culture” as a black box and “but think of the children” as an excuse. Care to realise why?
I think I know why the aristocracy back then was more feminine:
As we said already – these were militarists. Only in the late stage decadent period did they not personally see war often.
So after wearing armor or very spartan combat clothing, one would try to “balance it out” with something a little more ostentatious
How can anyone forget David Hasselhof?
Very Nordic-looking too. Though under-utilized as a protagonist, IMO.
On a sidetrack, I’ve been trying to think of blond stars being heroes, after 1980. I can think of a few, like Hauer in Ladyhawke, or Dolph Lundgren in Masters of the Universe, or Mark Hamill (kind of brownish), but seems to be somewhat a dearth, especially after 1990. Curious, considering how common blondes (often fake) are.
There’s DiCaprio, but, though always popular with the ladies, he is not very masculine, in a traditional sense, so it would be easy to see that as a subversion.
I guess there is Brad Pitt.
Don’t know if it is necessarily something political. I have honestly not known many men with light blond hair. And though I have known a lot of natural blondes, their hair often gets dark very quickly into adulthood.
Would be something interesting to track though. I keep wishing we had something like ngrams for studying trends in movies.
All Conan did in Phoenix was brood. Part of the story is that he was glad that the conspirators attack him, because at least he has something to kill again now.
That is a noteworthy example, though I consider Baywatch to be among the worst television ever produced (eye candy, aside) and I think TV is less of a filter. Knight Rider, maybe?
BTW, I can personally confirm that they sold his albums in Germany, having done some browsing many years ago, for my amusement.
Sorry, I should be clear. I don’t dispute you other points, e.g. sex-selective abortion. Only the premise that China has a “low fertility problem”.
I’m an advocate for 700 million Chinese. A massive population was an asset in 80’s Reform and Opening 改革开放 because education level was low, and manufacturing labor intensive. But not anymore when China is trying to break from the Middle Income Trap and move higher in the value chain.
It’s also tends to be a zero sum game, China has already displaced Germany as the top machine tool manufacturer. There’s no point to crowd out all competitors and led to vicious geopolitical competition.
Balance and harmony
https://www.dictionary.com/e/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/yin-yang-300×300.jpg
996 work hours is result of elite overglute and only benefits oligarchs like Jack Ma. Young people are putting in overtime for the sake of itself and competing with each other in another zero-sum game. GDP per capita per hours worked is abysmal. This is a main reason for the lying flat 躺平 movement.
Real estate prices in Shanghai is about same as that of Zürich, but removing racial/cultural differences, which would you prefer to live in?
China punches below weight in international tourism (behind France, Spain and US in absolute terms https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rankings). Maybe harming her cachet is the perception that its overcrowded and polluted?
I don’t understand your term “black box.”
IMO, you are using “think of the children” in an inappropriate context. It is used as a leftist tactic to justify increased taxes or other mandatory, new spending. That context mostly does not work on the Right. It does not work for promoting family or cultural values.
You seem to be saying, that I cannot be concerned for future generations. That it must be my personal material needs that I am trying to pass off as someone else’s. Seems rather solipsistic of you. Misanthropic, I should say too. And ahistorical.
You think the people who seized the GPO in Dublin in 1916 were concerned about their own material needs? Or even the material needs of others? They interrupted a lot of people’s pension checks. It had nothing to do with money.
I like you Songbird. You’re funny. It is also easy to see how kind your intentions are and I wish you many great and wonderful things.
I don’t think you’re capable of understanding me and that’s fine, I suppose I don’t have the words, but please take on trust the above.
Heidi Lamarr. Dietrich. Meryl StreeP. Uma Thurman.
Men not so much and minor. Fassbender?
—5 day water fast—
This was close to a straight water fast, with the exception of a single cup of beef broth on days 1 to 3, with calorie intake less than 50 calories.
Supplementation: beef broth(ran out on day 4-5), nicotine lozenges(1mg) and 7-11 POWER COFFEE which suppressed hunger. I drank black coffee, sometimes with ice, whenever I wanted as a 0 calorie drink.
Exercise: I maintained a fairly intensive schedule to see how much it would be impacted – I kept up 3x days of resistance training, 3x days of light cardio during rest days, and one full rest day per week. I also maintained at leat 8000 steps a day, sometimes up to 11k, so my overall cardio was not much impacted.
Result: I lost 7 lbs in 5 days, I lost a full 2% of bodyfat and muscle mass was basically not impacted, as recorded by OMRON. Ketosis hit after 48 hours, if not less.(this is important for those who are looking to get into fat adaption asap) My workouts were largely not impacted, although recovery became more difficult by day 4. Records show that I hit my step total every day, walking between 4 to 5 miles(8k to 11k steps). In fact, I was more consistent on my fast days than I was before, suggesting that the additional focus and energy from norepinephrine helped me. I recorded mild performance gains on some aspects resistance training, which was unusual; most of them were not able to budge upward, as expected.
Subjective experience:
Days 1-3 went swimmingly – even pleasantly. I was unusually productive and at moments, approached a state akin to euphoria, ultimately accomplishing multiple chores that I had left undone, actually organized my evernote, started new routines which I am maintaining effectively now, got some programming done and was able to get up pretty much every date on the dot around 6:00 AM – even if I stayed up until 3 AM.
Day 4 after running out of beef broth powder that things began to become more difficult – not cognitively, but with the resistance workout not recovering as well as I wished.
Day 5 featured an odd mix of intense energy and bodily fatigue, a bit like having your feet continue to insist to move while your body topples over. At some point I recognized that this was possibly an electrolyte issue, and drank some Himalayan salt with warm water(tastes amazing when you’re fasting btw), and everything seemed to normalize. I ended up refocused and worked on things until 3 AM again.
The only other thing I noted was that on day 3 onward, I often felt cold, which I attribute to low blood pressure. Tastes were enhanced and black coffee(and salted warm water) was much more enjoyable than before.
Overall: I think it was a good experience and I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but with more attention to the electrolytes losses. As before, the experience from the hormonal boosts was great and correspondingly useful, allowing me to build habits and virtual structures(like a template for Evernote notes and recordings) that will be able to help me afterward. I mostly did not experience hunger pangs, with the exception of the end of Day 4, but it was more of an observation of “huh, my tummy is quivering” than an actual pang. In the future, though, I think that I will mostly assign it as a 3 day water fast, possibly at the end of every other month(holidays and other things permitting).
—5 day protein sparing fast—
This is a version from this: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/psmf-diet
The idea is to keep caloric intake extremely low – typically at 800 or below, while keeping protein intake high in order to prevent losses to muscle. This was interesting to me, and since I was already in ketosis from my water fast, I wanted to continue onward to what results that I would have – if I would continue significant weight loss, etc, and if my performance would be impacted. It was quite surprising overall.
Supplementation: Nicotine lozenges(1mg) and 7-11 POWER COFFEE which suppressed hunger as before.
Exercise: Since my performance was largely unimpacted, I continued my program. However, notably, on the protein sparing diet, I was actually able to notice improvement in my reps and weight. More on this later.
Result: I lost 1 lb in 5 days, a really rather underwhelming amount compared to water fasting. I lost 0.7% bodyfat, but increasingly appeared to have gained skeletal muscle percentage around 2-3%. Its possible to argue that this is a “body recomposition” but overall, I was mostly a bit confused by the result and have considered several confounding factors, including the consumption of creatine on day 4 or so.
Surprisingly, and pleasantly, I never left ketosis during the entire period, which to me is a strong vindication that ketosis is maintained so as long as you limit your carb intake sufficiently(<30 grams). I was eating up to 128 grams of protein and still ketosis maintained.
Subjective experience:
Meals were difficult and required precise planning, because the combination of high protein and low calorie meant that an increasing quantities of my meals were balanced around whey isolate protein water.
I also began to become aware of “refeeding” issues, such as heaviness or sleepiness after consumption of carbs. Deep in ketosis, blood sugar begins to influence your mood, so it is something to be aware of.
Otherwise, however, energy levels were high. On the last day, I stayed up around 48 hours straight and was able to reorganize most of my home. In general, fasting seems to lead to boosts in mood and awareness, and this can drive forward even into stimuli close to manic behavior.
At the end of the last day, I had at times, almost had no interest in food anymore at all.
Epilogue: at some point after this, labor day saw me eat a fairly large meal with family. At some point, I think I exceeded 150 carbs, which definitively shut down ketosis. To maintain a ketogenic state, I think it is safe to say that restricting carbs is of paramount importance.
Even if I’ve said something pro-status quo (actually a resolution) to the Evergrande crisis, I would prefer a China where the dominance of scholars-mandarins are restored and agriculture regains primacy. Why not go back to a Confucian societal form. The 2nd best would be a relatively advanced China in defense of Eurasian ideals and which the country is heading.
Income, yes, I agree with that. It is inevitable that we will have some sort of basic income that will bridge income gap between rich and poor. Only stupid rich have declared income anyway. Smart rich earn like $1 per year or whatever.
Wealth inequality on the other hand is mathematically impossible to solve in a polite way, and it will have to increase going forward.
Basically, it is trivial and easy to make homeless crackhead and Bill Gates drive the same car, and we should aim for that, it’s a good policy. But it is impossible and undesirable for both Bill Gates and homeless crackhead to have controlling stake in Microsoft Corporation. We kinda want to leave this to Bill Gates.
Only recessions reduce wealth inequality (revolution being an extreme version of a recession) and they mostly hurt the poors badly. We could solve wealth inequality problem by killing off a lot of the poors but in a political economy based on mass consumption killing your customers is a dumb idea.
Thus, it is inevitable that income gap will shrink, and wealth gap will increase.
A few observations…
I would think that your 5 day fast(s) would be for somebody who’s already had the experiences of fasting several if not many times before. If this is so, what would you recommend for somebody who’s interested in fasting, but at a lesser more gradual pace. I’ve fasted a few times before, actually long ago before it became fashionable amongst those who wish to practice a healthier lifestyle, for one full day at a time. But that was a long time ago.
Obviously, the supplements that you used to help you, salt, coffee, nicotine, aided you in being able to undergo the stresses and needs of your deprived body. Why not fast for a lesser timeframe, say 1- 3 days max, and forego these supplements? Wouldn’t the process of ketosis begin sooner and be more intense without these additional supplements, making the need for a day four or five unnecessary to achieve the final results that you were striving to achieve?
Why add nicotine to your regimen? Isn’t nicotine a poison of sorts?
Were you able to compare notes with Karlin, who underwent a five day fast about a year ago? Did he also rely on any supplements to help him last till the last, fifth day?
Good questions, i went on a potato diet a month ago and lost 15 lbs, but i still need 5 lbs to go and i want to work out again, and eat more than potatoes. I do drink a lot of coffee though, so that’s interesting.
Yellowface Anon,
“What A123 raises are legit……”
A123 is a professional troll. It’s stupid to waste time on him.
Very well said.
Technology is a means of human liberation, for at this current stage of evolution people are not able to psychically manifest (as a whole) ease and prosperity, so we must use tools. Even better than a car will be a private or family sized flying saucer that can whip us across stars and galaxies. More Technology, newer paths, and newer means of development (more distributed and efficient) are all steps upon the path of liebrarion and also protecting what is best in our older ways of life. It only becomes evil when it dominated or corrupts.
I haven’t heard the term “fluffy/fluffies” in this context, but I am now tragically displeased. It certainly fits.
The worst part about the low level demon pacts is how poorly thought out they are. Then again, a person thinking clearly wouldn’t try to organize a blood sacrifice for a lottery ticket, so it’s basically the more religious version of a guy murdering someone over a stimulus check.
Now, those Santa Muerte Death worshippers back in 2012 pulled off a very successful culmination to long ritual. Those beheadings weren’t all for not!
#UniteNorthAmericaAndPurgeTheDevilWorshippers
Demons are figments of belief, but beliefs rule the world.
Gates gonna be lynched for his hand in the vaccine business.
Stop projecting trends of the past into the long-term future.
Some years ago, I changed to a diet mostly of beef, eggs, and salad, and sometimes I follow a water fast
on Wednesdays and Fridays, rather than eat the Lenten meals that my wife prepares. Pretty much right away, I lost about twenty pounds of fat, and feel more energetic than ever, despite the increasing number of grey hairs in my beard. When I ate more carbs, I found water fasts very difficult, but now I hardly notice them. But I haven’t yet experimented with longer fasts, like Chieh and Karlin.
Why not? Because China doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the only way for it to preserve its sovereignty is to try and force economic and military development. To beat the strong, one must be — or become — stronger than they are. For the Chinese people, this entails certain sacrifices, to be sure. But the fact that the Chinese are now taking steps to preserve their sovereignty, which includes their cultural and memetic sovereignty, is very important and has not evaded attention. This is why “China BAD!” seething and coping has become a staple on both the American left and the right. It’s the one thing they agree upon.
When China is supreme, perhaps it can relax and devote itself to agriculture and its schools can revert to the chanting and memorialization of Confucian texts. But this would be a kind of civilizational solipsism, and might resemble what is happening to America right now — reverting to a state with all the accoutrements of a bout of solipsistic insanity, with a monomaniacal fixation on its historical blunders and its worst impulses, and the willful denial of external objective reality. There is hardly anything, save perhaps a real plague or a meteor strike, that can more thoroughly enervate and destroy a society.
So China will eventually take it out on America. And if it reverts to traditional agrarianism, somebody else will take it out on them.
He might be trapped in a broadly Trumpist view of the world, but a lot of his insecurities are rooted in very real issues, such as partisan political dysfunction and globalist encroachment. But instead of seeing foreign powers as potential partners, they are seen as essentialized irreconcilible threats (the usual “suspects”) that must be contained and curtailed at least, and eliminated at best.
A purely American populist perspective that is booming since Trump. America and Christ first, the rest being subjugated or dead.
I enjoy drinking coffee too, however, I’ve cut down quite a bit from what I used to consume years ago.
I came across a couple of adaptations to drinking coffee that make for a good exotic touch. Occasionally, I like to substitute coconut milk for regular cow’s milk or cream, for a nice slightly sweet variation.
As far as sweetening coffee goes, I’ve totally cut out white sugar and now use stevia products. I’ve found that some stevia products are better than others. My favorite so far is a stevia “extract” that I purchase at “Trader Joes”. I also like to add in one very small teaspoon of honey to a cup, it gives the taste even more of a natural, exotic touch.
The best innovation is for last. I have a couple of monk friends who live in a small skeete that I occasionally visit. One of them likes to drink coffee and adds some interesting herbs like cinnamon, nutmeg, dark chocolate and even a very small amount of red pepper (and probably more, that I’m not aware of). All of these spices, if added in a small amount, add some nice background notes that go quite well with coffee. One day while brewing some coffee, I thought of the “Bishop’s blend” and remembered that I had a small bottle of “pumpkin pie spice” in my pantry, that I only use once a year at Thanksgiving time. The little bottle had the following herbs within: “cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, star anise, fennel, black pepper”. All you need is to add in one very small amount (1/20 of a teaspoon) to a cup of coffee, and you too can enter the world of Arabian sheikhs. Even my 89 year roommate, who is not crazy about coffee seems to like this “blend”. 🙂
Most naturally blonde women’s hair darkens considerably to a mousey sort of brown in adulthood, especially if they don’t get much sun. They then dye it to continue with the look they once had naturally in their teenage years and before.
Also, long hair gets exposed to a lot more sun than short hair as it is around for more time. This is why women are more likely to have naturally blonde hair in adulthood than men in this era of short hair for men and long hair for women. A lot of women’s hair lightens considerably during beach holidays and shampoos which further encourage process are popular.
Other shampoos, that deposit small amounts of dye to add to the blondness, are also very popular. They too require longer hair to be effective as they build up over time.
My hair lightens tremendously in the sun, but that sun also dries it out. I then need to use special leave-in conditioners to maintain it so that it doesn’t become bedraggled. Perhaps you have the same problem and have not even realised it?
Anyway, these conditioners can irritate my scalp and give me dandruff. Hair dye can also have this effect, but it is managed away by the hair salon. The truth is that the vast majority of modern women in the developed world dye their hair. It is rare to make it darker though, partly because of how it looks, but also because you can look very weird with eyebrows that are much lighter than your hair.
As you might guess, this is just putting a toe into the very deep waters of activity in this area. It is obviously of considerable importance to humanity, whether people like that fact or not.
On your point about Hollywood, there have been a lot of blond (male) actors and in “manly” roles, far higher than their percentage of the population. This is probably because Hollywood actors have the best aesthetic help and, therefore, the best aesthetics. These include Brad Pitt, Leonardo Di Caprio (see Blood Diamond if you don’t think he gets to be called ” manly”), Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Thor, his brother, his other brother(!), Chris Evans and many, many more.
I certainly could benefit from losing 20 lbs. It would be good for me spiritually too.
You sure you don’t worship devils of your own?
Wrangel’s grandson wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal about American incompetence in Afghanistan:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/incompetence-afghanistan-war-biden-withdrawal-crisis-management-11630942877?mod=opinion_major_pos17
Once the Obama administration made withdrawal from Afghanistan a national policy, the military and State Department should have begun contingency planning and adopting procedures to address the problems resulting from any evacuation. The U.S. government had more than 12 years to create and put in place such plans.
It seems obvious that the troop deployments needed to provide security for an evacuation should have been addressed in advance. The same is true of methods to track U.S. citizens in Afghanistan, identify Afghan individuals at risk and their families, accelerate visa processing and resettle refugees.
My grandfather, Lt. Gen. Peter N. Wrangel, with infinitely fewer resources in Russia’s anti-Bolshevik White Army, evacuated 150,000 civilians and soldiers, including 7,000 children, by sea from Crimea in November 1920 in the face of the advancing Red Army. He was the very last person to leave, two hours before the Red Army entered Sebastopol. The difference was planning and foresight—and bureaucratic incompetence in Afghanistan by the U.S. government over three administrations.
Peter A. Basilevsky
Newtown Square, Pa.
Based on Biden’s total ineptness in conducting an evacuation operation in Afghanistan, that as you point out included what should have been a period of 12 years of thought and preparation, can you imagine trusting this man’s abilities to conduct any future wars that the US might find itself involved with?
Thanks. Fassbender is an interesting one.
Biggest role I recall seeing him in was as a psychopathic blond in Prometheus. (though an android.)
I have the vague impression that most people would suspect him of being English. Perhaps, a rare name. In that light, it is interesting to read his wikipedia entry, where he almost seems to come across as an Irish nationalist. Mentions Michael Collins as a collateral ancestor. Also, that he has production company named after Finn McCool and is working on a project about Cuchulainn. Not to mention, that he can speak Irish and grew up in the Kingdom.
Perhaps, he is trying to emphasize his mother’s half over his father’s?
Honestly, I have to think the incompetence is at least partly intentional. If interventionists are going to be forced to retreat, they’re at least going to make it look bad so they can say, “See? This is what happens when we retreat. This is why our Forever Wars need to go on forever.”
After all, it’s not like anyone is losing his job over this. I’m not really sure that anyone is even getting chewed out.
One key difference between the USG’s top brass and Wrangel is that the former are, by all appearances, a collection of bastards while Wrangel was, by all appearances, a mensch. But why is that? The Imperial Russian Army surely had its fair share of incompetent officers during WW1 who could have easily and thoroughly botched that final retreat from Crimea. A competent senior officer corps would seem to be the exception, not the rule, among states. But Wrangel, belonging not to a state so much as a movement engaged in an existential conflict, advanced rapidly on the basis of his widely-acknowledged competence.
Have seen Blood Diamond. I thought that for Hollywood, it was a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of a Rhodesian. Though, of course, there is another way of looking at it. I think Leo is quite a good actor, especially how he can pick up accents, though lower than average masculinity, at least for a star.
I believe their hands were tied with Thor, as they had already made the Whitest God a pitch-black African and given him a butt-kicking Asian babe as a friend. Captain America, they have remade as a black guy, I’ve heard.
Though, you may be right that there is not a shortage.
IMO, the worst hair color for Hollywood is red. It is rare, but there are plenty of characters written with it. These days, they often blackwash them. But I feel that they just don’t put the necessary effort into finding people with naturally red hair. And, for the most part, it is not something you can fake. IMO, it takes a rare blonde, to be made into a passable redhead. Mostly, it looks too fake.
I’ve already fasted a couple of times before, yes, mostly three day fasts. For others, I recommend starting with 24 hour fasts and always recommend supporting with bone broth when possible.
1) Forgoing bone broth, as noted, is a bad idea especially if you plan on remaining active – I was going to try to continue my workout schedule, and electrolyte exhaustion will hit you fast(and can be fatal).
2) The other supplements mostly just helped suppress appetite or made the fast more entertaining. Nicotine is not harmful in the tiny quantities utilized and by the method of delivery used.
3) I didn’t compare notes with Anatoly though he was aware and familiar with my efforts to keep metrics. I actually have to day to day metrics, but because of the way that my recording device handles things, I’ll have to sanitize the data first before I present it(it makes an entire entry per recording, which is not as useful as keeping it by the day).
4) Generally speaking, longer fasts promotes more autophagy. This is good, though evidently not enough at all to support muscle growth from the workout(I wasn’t able to execute progressive overload during the water fast).
5) I did come to appreciate black and extremely lightly flavored coffee much more so afterward; one of my favorite blends is a light “coconut” flavoring to coffee, to which I add about four tablespoons of half-and-half. Its a huge indulgence for me, and has tones of natural sweetness without any added sugar.
Idiots making deals with things they don’t understand. Nothing could go wrong, of course.
Its pretty amusing, along with being tragically stupid, yes.
Interesting article about how Chinese government actually works.
For once, it isn’t the cartoon of cold efficiency that haunts progressives nor which incipient authoritarians arouse themselves over.
It is so obvious that everyone seems to forget it, but an intelligent and productive people only need a government more competent that Chairman Mao’s to approach middle income status. The astonishing thing about China is not their economic growth to get to where they are, but that they were not there decades ago.
https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-myth-of-monolithic-china/
I agree, but you should re-read your comment after you have substituted “understand” for its synonym “love.”
One cannot love the shadow into light, anymore than you can love wood into steel.
More strenuous measures are required.
Would you take that approach to your own family?
Love can be plenty strenuous. See above.
My family is not made of entities of unearthly evil but I’ve applied the principle plenty, thanks and it has served me well(along with the beautiful thing called quantification).
It is a strange human arrogance to assume total comprehension of the universe, when we can’t conclusively determine the fundamental forces of the universe.
I can agree with much of what you said, but honestly I think most SJW types have little mind for military matters, just like Biden. And as for Kamala — I’m pretty confident she could be engaged in discussions of military strategy/tactics for the rest of her life without ever really understanding what anyone is talking about.
When it comes to such matters, contemporary leftists are almost entirely of two types: either their mindset is basically bureaucratic/institutional and they defer to neocons and military men because that’s the bureaucratic thing to do, or they’re peaceniks and do the opposite of what the military men call for without really understanding the arguments of the military men. They have no equivalent to the paleocons, who are capable of strategic thought but choose to disagree with the military men and neocons.
I can agree with much of what you said, but honestly I think most SJW types have little mind for military matters, just like Biden. And as for Kamala — I’m pretty confident she could be engaged in discussions of military strategy/tactics for the rest of her life without ever really understanding what anyone is talking about.
When it comes to such matters, contemporary leftists are almost entirely of two types: either their mindset is basically bureaucratic/institutional and they defer to neocons and military men, or they’re peaceniks and do the opposite of what the military men call for without really understanding the arguments of the military men. They have no equivalent to the paleocons, who are capable of strategic thought but choose to disagree with the military men and neocons.
That seems mean.
Wanted to comment a bit more on this – on ketosis, your body is actually not particularly deprived because it actually can pull its main energy sources by breaking down fat and using ketones instead of glucose. What it is missing are amino acids aka protein and electrolytes, neither which it can store efficiently.
In order to maintain the amino acids for life, it will first turn to autophagy to break down old cells and waste material in order to support you: this is a good thing, as you do want to get rid of senescent cells where possible. The kidneys will attempt to conserve your electrolytes, but ketones tend to use more water and you will be probably drinking a lot of water on a water fast(and especially so if you’re still working out), so this is where replacement is essential.
You will probably survive if you don’t, but the body can also downregulate metabolism – and that’s something you definitely want to avoid as much as possible if you’re looking to lose weight or change body composition. So the best way to keep yourself going “full blast” is to keep up your working out schedule, measure your caloric expenditure(and keep it up), and replace the minerals needed.
If you’re just starting out, that’s probably a lot of variables to keep track of. But I’ve found it reasonably optimal – both physically and cognitively.
Incidentally, I might garnered the attention of a physician doing this, so I might have much better metrics the next time I attempt it, including full body measurements. That would be cool.
Yes, technology can liberate as well as imprison.
Whether “more” technology is a good thing in a particular case, depends on human flourishing. In many cases, less technology is liberating.
Up till now, like children we have been so enamored of our new toy that we can’t even imagine saying “no” to technology. Cars exist? Let’s make cities revolve around cars and not human needs like beauty, walkability, enjoyment, etc.
In other words we made technology into a God that we sacrifice ourselves to – not a good servant and companion that serves our needs.
This is understandable – but the attitude of a civilization still in it’s childhood stage.
The next stage in civilization, I believe, will be “growing up” – we will no longer so enamored of our shiny toy that we can never say “no” to it.
We integrate it into the whole package of human flourishing as merely one piece, and not even the most important one.
When technology can liberate us, we gladly use it. When it imprisons us, we wisely limit it. Mere dull “efficiency”, the virtue of the plodding and insensitive, is no longer our primary goal – higher joys like beauty, human satisfaction and flourishing, regain their proper place.
However, too many humans today still have the “childish” attitude towards technology – many of them on this board.
But we will grow up eventually.
You’re talking about a country of 1.4 billion people. It is hard to get your head around, but the image you have of it would never be able to fit reality.
Their system is very good at things which you cannot possibly fake the results of. This is because the central authority makes a decree and then all of the other authorities will scramble to fulfill their intent. If those minor authorities are found out to have failed, then they are severely punished. The incentives which run from this are clear. Massively overprioritise solutions which you can’t fake and then fake the rest, if needed or to your benefit.
This is where their sheen of hard competence comes from. It is the image their system pushes them to maintain at all costs, but, as with all systems that push images, it is never going to be the reality.
What’s interesting is that this image serves well as a geopolitical “bad guy” for the US establishment. The two are in perhaps unwitting cooperation to maintain it. It serves their respective domestic interests and is kind of a fun narrative for popular consumption. But then some weird people personally buy into it as a manifestation of their own aggrandised self-image, which is pretty annoying. It takes something fun and entertaining and turns it into a personal tragedy.
Ok, but just admit to your hurt feelings over all of this stuff you think you see already! It is ok.
I remember watching HellBoy 2 when quite young and I felt pretty hurt by the way the blond(e) antagonists were portrayed by the sneaky Spanish director. I may not have really understood the film, but it felt like a personal attack. A number of years later I even avoided watching his Oscar winning film about the fish person who has sex, mostly because of that previous feeling. I should probably download it and take another look to see what left me so peeved, but I am not ashamed to say that I was hurt, because I was hurt.
There is comic cannon for a female Thor. They needed to find the modern equivalent of Bridgette Nielsen (Red Sonja) in casting for a convincing role. Don’t knock the potential for cosplay, mildly NSFW below [MORE]
Strong female characters are not necessarily harmful to obtaining young male demographic audience. Having physically unappealing actresses with anti-male sentiment does not work (e.g. Bird of Prey – movie). I still do not understand why Bird of Prey – TV was cancelled in 2000. Supposedly it won its time slot. Mia Sara was wonderful casting as a very scary foe, Dr. Harleen Quinzel.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d9/70/1e/d9701ee15a428793acfa4d863e5b0244.jpg
Bird of Prey — TV Cast (left) — Movie Cast (right)
https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/birds-of-prey-tv-show-vs-movie.jpg
https://i2.wp.com/www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/female-thor-comparison-featured.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/781981619073318943/882498932456968203/TA0939.jpg
We have different preferred outcomes for US wars though.
Biden won’t be calling the shots but yes, I generally agree.
Why shouldn’t my feelings be hurt by people who habitually try to undermine Euro ethnocentrism? The only workable defense against invasion. As to the other stuff, it is technique. Without reference to politics, one can be offended by poor craftmanship.
Sailer had a good term for that one: “fishcegenation.” Haven’t seen it, not interested. Don’t like the director or theme. Oscar-winning is not a good endorsement for the audience, IMO.
Only other major role I remember for Fassbender is when he played Magneto in the X-men reboot. Backstory: traumatized by his family dying in the Holocaust and by an evil Nazi scientist doing experiments on him to warp his mind.
A lot of people consider Red Sonja to be terrible movie, but I actually thought they handled the concept of a butt-kicking babe pretty well.
All the other amazons get rolled. Red Sonja alone is good because she was given a divine gift of good swordmanship, so she could avenge her family. And though she has a prejudice against men from an evil lesbo sending goons to gangrape her, she inevitably finds herself being won over by a strong and honorable man.
I feel like despite its other flaws, the film has the breath of life in it. It isn’t oversexed but sterile like a lot of Hollywood films. You are made to feel like Pseudo-Conan will begat his sons upon Sonja. Unironically, I think it is one of the most rightwing films that I can remember. And wasn’t George MacDonald Fraser involved in it?
Never saw Birds of Prey.
How about starting with something less obtuse? Like you feel bad because characters you identify with were make to look bad, foolish or ugly? It makes you question your own worth in those respects and you fear it will make others think less of you too.
Then you can start talking about huge impersonal forces like ethnocentrism on a European level. It is like you want to save everyone from drowning but you don’t want to learn how to swim.
Honestly, it leads me to suspect that you don’t want to save others from drowning at all, but are just using that big schema as an excuse so you don’t have to overcome your fears and get in the water.
Potato diet? Remarkable, never heard of it.
Guess it was the mainstay of many peasants in Europe for a few hundred years.
I remember reading the travelogue of a woman who passed through a spot on the map where many of my ancestors were then living. She asked for bread and was told that it was not to be found for many miles.
Of course, I don’t know how well the gut of Europeans could be adapted to potatoes. But I guess the main thing was a winnowing due to Type II diabetes.
Yes, there is something special in those high summits. Things feel and even sound different up there. It can’t be a coincidence that so many religions have used high mountains as sacred places.
But I’d settle a bit lower than you. Beyond a certain altitude, that for me is ~13k’, your body starts to complain. It sometimes feels like you’re inebriated, which is not necessarily a bad feeling, or that you want to sleep during the day (but can’t sleep at night), but it’s all just basically your body asking you to go down to a more hospitable atmosphere.
A doctor in Chile who had patients and even relatives who practiced mountaineering once told me that she didn’t recommend anyone going beyond 5,000 mt (~16,000′) without oxygen tanks. She said she had seen cases of mental decline due to lack of oxygen in people who had practiced too much high-altitude climbing. I think I’ve seen that too.
What a wonderful place to spend 2.5 weeks in. Or a life.
You may live far away from these places but few people, even here, get top spend so much time enjoying nature.
I wouldn’t take it for granted that people know what you’re talking about. Dmitry is a smart guy but perhaps he doesn’t have any more information on the subject than what he gets from mainstream media (NYT, BBC, CNN) so Portland and Minnesota may rather evoke for him images of Proud Boy members attacking peaceful protesters or something like that, who knows… That’s the point we have reached with the biased media we have.
As for Biden becoming President through fraud, I am unconvinced. Some of the testimonies (not all) merited an investigation that never happened but I watched part of the special state legislature sessions and there were also things that didn’t add up, such as Trump increasing his vote share in the cities of contested states that supposedly gave Biden his advantage.
Ultimately, the majority-republican legislators of the contested states were given more evidence than you and me have but somehow decided not to contest the results so that was it. A proper investigation of each of the hundreds of affidavits in the courts was going to take months or years anyway so there was no legal way to stop the transfer of power once the legislators and the VP accepted the results.
A different matter is that a good percentage of Americans still believe that the elections were rigged, which is unprecedented in recent history. But, instead of full transparency in order to legitimize the system, the only thing that comes to the minds of democrats and RINOs is censorship, repression and doubling down on the practices that made the last elections suspect. That is not going to work, it never has anywhere. In fact, if a similar percentage of Democrats believed that Trump had won the elections through fraud, the riots would have been much worse and, as we saw during the Russiagate comedy or the BLM protests, the media and Big Tech would actually be supporting them.
It probably works. It reminds me of the epic effort by a potato lobbyist who ate only potatoes:
https://www.forksoverknives.com/wellness/getting-well-on-twenty-potatoes-a-day/
I give him props for eating his own dog food.
That would be moronic.
Accelerate to maximalism.
Glory to the Machine, the God that Is and Shall Be.
Generally, once a civilization becomes “supreme” – achieves the highest levels of material wealth and power – it begins to “decline”, because the material wealth and power are seen for what they are – illusions, and not ultimately satisfying.
It’s a remarkable fact – but no civilization has become supreme and stayed there for long. The starkest and clearest message that humanity is not satisfied by material wealth and power – no sooner does it achieve it, then it tosses it aside in boredom and disgust. It can’t be bothered to keep it lol.
So yes, a condition for China to become a society less focused on material things is for it first to taste of material supremacy, as far as that’s possible.
A famous Taoist principle says, that decline sets in at the moment of supremacy – in a cyclical world, which we clearly live in, this is obviously true.
You are also quite correct to say that one cannot be powerless in a world of aggressive states. A sad fact, abd one China learnt last century. That is why, the only way any turn towards a more spiritual life would be possible is if it is a worldwide phenomenon. In a globalized world, isolation is no longer possible.
At least, all major states, capable of exerting serious lower, must exhaust their desire for material power and turn to the spiritual.
That is why I am long term hopeful. The West has substantially lost it’s fascination with the material, or is in the beginning stages of that, after having tasted unrivalled supremacy. Japan too.
China is the last great civilization and serious power that still has to go through this transformation.
When China begins to “decline” – loses its interest in purely material development – who is left? No one!
A new age of spirituality can dawn worldwide – for a time, of course.
China’s major challenges historically have been fracturing, and the CCP provides a glue against that. It should also be noted that historically China had a great deal of difficulty seeing themselves as specifically Chinese, and this is to some extent, still an issue with the major cities such as Shanghai, which produces at times rival philosophies and factions, such as the Shanghai clique; on a very general and broad level that ignores a lot of nuance, it can be seen as dueling philosophies of “Beijing” or “Northern” philosophies that are more aggressive and militaristic(a long history of near constant warfare against barbarians) and the “Shanghai” or “Southern” philosophies of merchantile and cosmopolitan attitudes from their main source of prosperity.
This is a pretty good documentary of what it is like to be a “good” cadre, imo, and the difficulties inherent:
https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Mayor-Geng-Yanbo/dp/B01EO2IPB0
And The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor is one of the best writeups.
As our host might say, how many divisions do scholar-mandarins have?
The Ming was a first test case in world history of an almost entirely scholar-ruled government, you can read Ray Huang’s 1587 A Year of No Significance to see what a sorry mess it become.
Typically the ruling class come from three classes
Meritocracy: power through bureaucratic exams
Oligarchy: power through money
PRC is ruled by a coalition of 1 and 2; US is ruled by a coalition of 3 and 2 (with the meritocratic component drastically shrinking)
Thanks, that was quite interesting.
Someone once told me that Irish people used to eat 10 pounds of potatoes a day, for the reason that potatoes are protein-poor. I was quite skeptical, if for no other reason than that seems like more than it would be possible to eat.
But this fellow was saying he was doing 6.5 pounds/day and that each potato (large) has as much protein as half a glass of milk, which seems like a lot. I wonder if the old cultivar had less protein.
You omitted the specialists in murder, larceny, blackmail, rape, torture, kidnapping.
They have a bunch of money but their power is mainly due to their lack of conscience and their skill at performance of mayhem.
Honestly, this talk of hidden feelings just makes my eyes glaze over. No offense intended, but I think I just have the wrong personality factors for it. Or maybe it is a masculine/feminine divide? I don’t know.
I feel that there is also a disconnect between us in that I am genuinely more group-orientated, in the sense of thinking of an in-group. I dislike seeing pozzed movies, but what hurts me is seeing pozzed people, especially Euros. As I’ve said, I think culture is an organizing tool, and that it is a serious deficiency for Europeans to feel that Hollywood or diversity is their culture.
Diversity is a kind of anticulture because it rejects moral standards, and it inevitably lowers the bar for everything. Makes people want to appeal to a global and necessarily dumber audience. Turns everything into crass consumerism, rejecting the spiritual.
Another interesting thing about the movie Red Sonja is that the villainess is the butt-kicking babe from the first Conan movie.
Apparently, they offered her the lead, and she declined and chose the role of villainess. I like Nielsen better as a protagonist, even though many hated her acting. Though, Bergman does a good job as the evil lesbo.
What is the spiritual to you?
Howard was a bit of a cowboy who would act out his fight scenes with friends, so he was pretty “high T” and I think he took up boxing quite seriously as well. One reason why Conan’s action seems come off as well is that besides his writing, he was working from at least a more realistic vision of what was happening even though it was in many ways, grown men capering around with sticks for swords. He was a man of great passions and frustrations and he came through in his writing; unfortunately, it also came through in his suicide.
I don’t know if that’s generally true of all pulp writers: Lovecraft was a skinny man throughout, haunted with terrors and often suffering malnutrition – he feared that the consumption of foreign foods would corrupt him, among other things. I don’t know much about Sax Rohmer – I found his Fu Manchu tales amusing, but his writing was often really quite bad, a lot like what you’d see on an Internet roleplaying games but with moments of brilliance that basically kept it together, a bit like pearls pulling along a line of seaweed. His photos seem to show him reasonably kept together. His quoted pieces like his description of Fu Manchu tend to be the highlights of his writing:
While people look for other value as more and more of their material needs are met, I wouldn’t call what they tend to seek next “spiritual”, though I suppose you would use that label to describe what they look for, as long as they use the same disguise.
See my comment #319 regarding “natural sweetness” and coffee. I like to use canned coconut cream/milk that does impart a very slight coconut sweetness. Stevia does the rest with just wee bit of honey to cover any “aftertaste”. The real “bomb” is the pumpkin pie spice that really takes a cup of joe up one whole level, IMHO. Thanks for the extra info about fasting.
BTW, I did skim the scholarly article about meditation that you provided me. Good stuff, that I want to read more slowly, sometime…
I bought a Muse 2 after reading your experiences with it. It is fun and nice to have physical feedback, so thank you.
I just wonder what you do about the calibration stage? I’ve used the device twice. The first time I meditated in the calibration stage, so later I constantly dipped in and out of “calm”, and the second time I was more noisy in my mind, so it basically sat there. This makes the difference between the two off-putting as the latter feels like a cheat and the former feels like a different sort of cheat, as they mean that there is “objective” measure.
What was your approach?
You should try to avoid meditating in the calibration stage as it can throw off the sensor a little, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that much so as long as you are consistent with it, as it’ll form a general trend and the Muse isn’t just using your calibration but multiple metrics.
If for some reason you can maintain extensive calm just the entire time, then you’re perfectly fine; you might want to try the heartbeat sensor and other systems to see if you can lower your heart rate at will and so on.
I just use it daily and try to accumulate birds, or see how long I can stretch it out(I think one hour and 15 minutes is the longest I have in one stretch); I’ve also considered using it as a general neurofeedback device for work, etc.
Additional errata for those curious:
Day to day measurements and food tables.
https://i.imgur.com/1ci6iZY.png
https://i.imgur.com/JsQCSYy.png
https://i.imgur.com/TRp4g30.png
https://i.imgur.com/A3txh80.png
Biden and Obama clashed on Afghanistan. Their ideas about foreign policy were quite different. Obama was, for the most part, a more polite continuation of W’s foreign policy. Biden was more of a realist, like Ike.
The most incompetent moments in Afghanistan were when W let OBL escape in December 2001, and Trump’s surrender/sabotage deal in 2020.
How did you not lose muscle while fasting?
Typo at 27th weight(should be 170) but ah well.
Perhaps call it boredom-avoidance?
Found another estimate: 12-14 lbs of potatoes/day by 1840.
I wonder if someone can find a figure for the amount of rice a Chinese farmer consumed. Guess it would be difficult, as they must do dry weight for rice.
Difficult to articulate that which is non-material – it can only be done clumsily. But I would say that it is that which is greater than the self: God, faith, nation. That which precedes and survives the self. That which is timeless and gives strength to the weak.
I partly ran this experiment to see if there was any truth to the meme.
The short of it is that if you’re a non-diabetic male engaged in regular resistance training, then you probably won’t lose muscle mass. As you can see at the end, when I began to consume protein, I actually appear to have gained some – which was really surprising to me.
Your human growth hormone will boost in an effort to prevent you from losing muscle – which makes sense, because in a natural environment, being unable to eat should not trigger weakness in men but increased efforts to find food.
https://i.imgur.com/7ile4rz.png
https://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-and-growth-hormone
I think Rohmer could have been a better writer, if he had taken the time. As it is, he comes across as the weakest of the famous oriental pulps.
Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to have a pretty high hairline. Kind of balding – maybe a correlate to T.
With Lovecraft, I think it may be a bit difficult to say, as he seems to have been sickly and maybe a bit neurotic, so that might mislead. He might appear weak and retiring, while having high T.
Sadly, it seems little is known about many more minor pulp contributors. I wonder if it would even be possible to identify all the women who used male pen names as women.
This seems higher than the capacity of the digestive system. Does this include other uses of potato, such as flouring it for bread? Can potato be used for beer?
Can’t find a breakdown of it, but I’m starting to suspect that maybe someone miscounted the use of the potato as animal feed.
By some accounts, it was common for the family to eat from a single pot from which chickens, dogs and pigs would then eat.
Yeah, amazingly, potatoes have the majority of the nutrients you need to survive and not too many calories. And yes, peasants and the Irish are good examples.
It is rather plain and boring though.
https://twitter.com/qin_duke/status/1434631469977198596
https://twitter.com/qin_duke/status/1434721131504807936
My roommate has told me that he and his family were fortunate enough to exist only on potatoes for one whole year sometime in the late 1930’s/early forties in Ukraine. He’s 89 and still travels on his own (he’s in Denver right now). To celebrate his 80th birthday, he got up real early in the morning, hiked about 10 miles and then scaled Hoverla to the very top, and then hiked back down all non-stop for at least 30 hours. It’s hard to believe, but a true story AFAIK. He said that about half way up Hoverla he sprung an erection that would not go down. Like I said, it’s hard to believe – that’s why Ripley made a bundle with his “Believe it or Not?”. 🙂 🙂
I don’t think I’m really a Taoist when I think what will happen is either global-scale lying flat, global-scale going Galt, or global scale 90s Russia.
The only thing this will breed is a hardcore Randian withdrawal from the formal institutions controlled by Uniparty political interests, and conversely a consolidation of economic power (in the form of patronage systems among businesses and consumers with common convictions), and building of local, alternate bases of power.
Political vendettas are trivial. Economic and social organization is everything.
Random photography spam. Partly inspired by my newfound amount of time from not eating has been waking up in the morning to take photos – it helps that I live in an area pretty closely surrounded by great outdoors.
https://i.imgur.com/CYMkgIj.png
Fishing boat at dawn.
https://i.imgur.com/dUxJcAQ.png
Bunny amid strawberries. Quite a difficult photo to take – took several days of getting to know this particular rabbit before it was comfortable enough to let me get close enough for this photo.
https://i.imgur.com/Gswt3S3.png
Incoming thunderstorm rolling over sunrise.
https://i.imgur.com/HJ3uEqO.png
Shadows of a midnight hunter.
https://i.imgur.com/92PJYWt.png
An explosion of gold: sunset behind clouds.
https://i.imgur.com/zra471s.png
Alley cat.
https://i.imgur.com/afeGyBR.png
Radar tower in stormy skies.
https://katehon.com/en/article/pandemic-authoritarianism-red-grains-cascade
Don’t read the title, read the content. It’s about how our world is entering an unstable phase and COVID vaccination mandates (among others) represent it.
Yes, just like Norman Borlaug was lynched for increased Indian obesity rates.
Do you know what’s GAVI?
This usually is through graft. And the story usually doesn’t end well for the grafter in Chinese history; not that it keeps people from trying.
3->2 is quite common, since one needs money to pay tutors, hence CCP is banning this to level playing field
No, what I meant only as in conquerors and their descendants.
The key is lineage. Timur, who had reconquered large swathe of Mongol Empire, never claimed title of Khan, only Emir; because he was not a lineal descendant of Genghis Khan, only related to.
In rare cases 2->1 and 3->1 occurs through marriage, Ursula von der Leyen, Rothschilds
Hybrids of 1 and 2 used to be common. The old Northwestern Chinese clans who founded Sui and Tang dynasties 关陇集团. The Korean Yangban 兩班 class.
There’s also 1->3, atop Deutsche Bank currently is a von Moltke.
Yes, a programme that will save more lives and avoid more sicknesses than almost any other in history.
Would future child poverty be reduced even more by an extremely successful programme of family planning in poor countries?
Almost certainly, but that’s no excuse for pretending that Bill Gates is anything but a pretty decent man trying to help poor people.
I thought early on there will be a refugee crisis of mainly Europeans from EU to Russia/Belarus and Red US states as EU’s economy disintegrate from massive anti-COVID-vaxx strikes. Basically the move from NY/CA to FL, but across the ocean.
You didn’t read loads of anti-Gates articles from day 1 of the while COVID thing, did you? He’s basically an oligarch with a eugenic upbringing of the sociopathic sort who uses his influence to buy out the WHO for his fascination with vaccines, and then curry favor with the WEF.
The hate on Gates is just the hate on the figurehead of consumerism, centralization and oligarchy. Basically, Big Everything will be widely hated even if they (Big Pharma and Big Tech included) incidentally provide things of value. Gab’s newsletter just talked about building a “parallel society” even if that means having a much “poorer” lifestyle. Svevlad said (I always paraphrase others), no matter how great material improvements will be, as far as people are demoralized and have expectation of doom (so many see the Great Reset as this), the society’s screwed.
I remember reading his stake in one of those meat substitute startups too.
But he also diddles children?
https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/what-we-know-about-bill-gates-and-jeffrey-epstein.html
That’s a huge allegation from very little evidence.
By the way, I did an hour on Muse just now. It was great. I only managed 30 minutes of it continuously on calm, or it looks like that when I eyeball the graph, but perhaps with a lot of practice I’ll get up to 1 hour 15. I think the streak got interrupted when I basically fell asleep, as the graph often surfaced after that, so I’ll have to learn to avoid it.
I don’t get bored because I get interesting visual images, but eventually I switch into full dreaming if I am not careful.
I haven’t eaten today except for a matcha latte much earlier, which may have helped.
Congratulations on your hour-long meditation! As you have discovered, it is quite a beautiful thing. The visual images are a source of much inspiration in my writing and something which I have come to appreciate as the seed of much of my more unusual ideas.
I’m sure that you can think of many routes from hence, so I’ll just toss in a few more ideas:
The immediate clarity of mind that comes after meditation appears to be supportive of learning, improving attention span and so on. So if there was an instrument or anything else that you wished to learn, you might want to give it a shot to transition to practice and seeing how it feels for you.
There’s also the idea of replacing some of sleep with meditation. I’ve felt some of that when I was meditating for a long time and needed less sleep; if you wish to run an experiment with that and see if it helps you get up earlier to see sunrises, etc, do let us know, as I think it could be interesting(and you probably have a device that gives you accurate sleep times).
https://www.lispine.com/blog/do-you-need-less-sleep-when-you-meditate
Thanks!
Something I’ve noticed is that the feedback is usually completely quiet when I breathe out, but makes noise more often when I breathe in. Is this pattern similar for you?
Not that I’m aware of; I’ve only noticed that I get birds more often when I breathe out. I like the desert soundtrack.
Yes.
I did however once invite gremlins into the house. That was foolish. Don’t mess with poorly made fairy stones.
I would add to that, “belief manifests the world.”
Thoughts do, indeed, become real.
Interesting point actually. They often do love these things, or rather, their imagined version of what these things are.
I know I loved faeries enough to try to invite them around the house.
I’d be interested in hearing more about your “visual images” that you experience while using Muse, if its not too personal. Are they any different since pre-Muse, or just more vivid, colorful?
Also, I notice that there are several different models of Muse? The newer ones, look more streamlined and look like headbands (well almost). If you, or our original guru here Chieh could chime in here and explain any possible differences, it would be appreciated. As far as more vivid dream images, I seem to experience this phenomena by using Wobenzym, a German pre-biotic blend that seems to clean out all of the gunk that can clog up the human circuitry. It’s not a psychedelic drug. 🙂
The original one isn’t sold anymore, so its a moot point in some ways. The difference is that it was very focused on measuring meditation only and thus was probably a better deal. The Muse 2 does more, but it is more than twice as expensive; I use the newer one myself(gave the older one away to a friend) and I think its probably not worth the price, but its overall still fine so I’m not going to complain too much.
The “visual images” or “visions” can be difficult to describe, but it is arguably psychedelic. I don’t believe it is just that, of course, but fair’s fair in noting such. There’s a lot of it which is essentially indescribable, much as you can’t really describe what a taste is like except in relation to something else, but it can be at times without a lot you can relate it to in my experience.
Sounds really interesting…”visions” and “psychedelia” of sorts, without the possible nasty side effects and any long term health issues? Can you explain more specifics about the “indescribable” images you’ve experienced (I realize what “indescribable” means, but can only hope for more). Do you see geometric, kaleidescopic type images, or is it more like some fantastical roller-coaster type of dream? Do you think that there is any chance of experiencing a “bad trip”. Is it religious in nature (providing insights into our inner beings and a Creator) in your opinion? Waiting for Tritelia Laxa to also recount her “visions”….
I cannot reply for whatever reason with my own tag:
My “visual” images are full bodied visceral experiences. I can turn them off and on at whim most of the time. I find them useful and they are interactive. They are weaker with Muse as some phenomena I experience with initial apprehension, which I wish to avoid on Muse as it is against the point. These can be with eyes closed, or overlayed onto what I ordinarily see with my eyes.
You will not have “bad trips.” The rest is highly individual I suspect. In my case, I remember seeing another world.
Was my description under the name “TL” useful?
Can’t love something and not understand it. Your love in that case is real, but it is for something quite other than the thing. As for me, I have no problems or drama with any of these phenomena and I don’t really understand why other people do.
Simple really:
Often enough, they are bad. Better to be cautious if one is not sure. If one is, then good.
It’s like with people, but moreso.
Actually, it’s not clear to me what you mean when you state:
Also, it would be interesting to get more of an explanation about what exactly Chieh means by “seeing another world”…very interesting, indeed.
Sorry, Ron banned me everywhere, but this blog.
To answer your question, I’ll let you know what I did just now.
I used the Muse headset for 45 minutes but turned off the sound-based feedback. I then darkened the room, lay down, covered my eyes and listened to “dark psytrance” via earphones.
I relaxed deeply and allowed my mind to wander a little as I wanted to see what my concerns were.
I have recently been feeling distracted and incomplete, but after a little while I remembered that I love everything and I sometimes get confused by that and want to change/fix things, even though I feel better observing. I then felt at home.
The left half of my body was very light and the right half was very dark. I relaxed further and enjoyed the various sensations from that flowing through me and watched the visuals which started in my mind’s eye.
Slowly both sides of my body filled with light as the journey continued around me. There is a lot to write about that “journey”, but experiences includes huge, twisting tunnels which I felt like I was flying down, monstrous apparitions and various other extremely imaginative demonic forms.
Throughout, I continued to feel and see the light in my own body and it reflected off those apparitions, but I was blissfully happy interacting with but not changing them. The best label for such an attitude which I can think of is “loving kindness.”
I also, earlier on during the 45 minutes, had experienced a point when my body was completely dark and unreflective. I don’t mind this, and stayed calm and asked in my mind for the support of my siblings. This helped and allowed me to feel complete and undistracted again, which is how I feel now.
I do this reasonably frequently. The phenomena which I encounter are not always what would be seen as evil, but often the opposite or more neutral. The time spent doing this usually benefits me.
Funnily, my Muse results were mostly “calm,” meaning that I was sort of meditating.
Since I did not have feedback, I was unsure if this was the case. I averaged about 3.5 “birds” a minute for 45 minutes, which isn’t that much, but my mind was not “active” once. Given the extremely detailed, meaningful and diverse range of experiences which I had, this is interesting.
No, I am banned again and can’t leave a question there. My IP is now blocked. My phone is blocked too. Ron might be more open about this, but that’s his prerogative. I have to use a new handle and hotspot off my phone to do this.
No, I am banned again and can’t leave a question there. My IP is now blocked. My phone is blocked too. Ron might be more open about this, but that’s his prerogative. I have to use a new handle and hotspot off my phone to do this.
The reply is a lie. I cannot comment and you’ll notice how scared Ron is of me finding alternative ways. I was able to make 3 comments in 4 days as my function was turned off then on again and by “derailing” he means I correctly pointed out that he had no clothes when he libelled some poor freelance marketing guy as a conspirator to extreme mass murder in a way that subtly encouraged his borderline psychopathic followers to track the individual down, all with the only “evidence” being that, although the guy denied it and his family did too, the guy hasn’t been able to “prove” a negative and that he wasn’t involved. Pretty grim stuff.
The reply is a lie. I cannot comment and you’ll notice how scared Ron is of me finding alternative ways. I was able to make 3 comments in 4 days as my function was turned off then on again and by “derailing” he means I correctly pointed out that he had no clothes when he libelled some poor freelance marketing guy as a conspirator to extreme mass murder in a way that subtly encouraged his borderline psychopathic followers to track the individual down, all with the only “evidence” being that, although the guy denied it and his family did too, the guy hasn’t been able to “prove” a negative and that he wasn’t involved. Pretty grim stuff.
It’s honestly hard for me to say if you’re banned or not because some of your handles had “Anon” in them and “Anon” are banned on my blog.
Anyhow, would appreciate you sticking around, you’re a very good commenter.
Thanks. I couldn’t leave a thank you react and don’t know if this will get through, but might as well try.
You haven’t engaged me yet. Not seriously, anyway.
Holy shit.
Could there be a more bright and shining example of (((narcisism))) than what I just read here?
The rest of your comment only makes it worse. Christ.
Read Sam Vaknin.
Hey, Triteleia:
I must be firm with you.
The above word salad is exactly the sort of subacute solipsism which is common to your tribe, but also makes the goyim resentful.
After all, who wants to deal with a hysterical narcissist, spinning around in their own SHIT, when everybody else just wants to get on the business of living.
What the heck is going on in Russia wrt the pandemic? The death rate reportedi is stably just under 800/day since mid-July, can anyone believe that?
I agree with virtually everything you said here. And yes, I was drunk.
Except….my response was not to your psychic explorations but to your seeming paranoia over being “banned”. I probably overdid it.
Lol. If you only knew….
Cheers
Oh, one other thing:
If it is the case that I’m someone looking for “attention” (as you claim), could you explain why I have not trawled the site for the many other…uh…hyper reactive commenters here?
Apparently your email is open only to non-goyim.
Hm.
Story of my life.