"YouTube has accustomed us to fast paced short content that doesn't really go very deep into anything."
https://youtu.be/-UOhCjB0AEI?si=BSZz_fj_9Qkt7DFU
https://youtu.be/-UOhCjB0AEI?si=BSZz_fj_9Qkt7DFU
It always has struck me as strange that people would claim that the existence of the physical disproves the existence of the metaphysical. If you are crossing a street, you have to look both ways. Looking to the left doesn't prove there are no cars coming from the right, and looking to the right doesn't prove there are no cars coming from the left. In the same way you cant use metaphysics to prove or disprove physics, and you cant use physics to prove or disprove metaphysics even though the road ahead of you is connected in front of you.
You make an interesting point. There is a tank, but there's a lot of forces trying to shatter it, claiming it's a prison and if only we could smash the tank the world would be ours for the taking.
Assuming bad faith or ignorance of our ancestors and also assuming that oneself is not either of those things is a bit naive.
In my view, nothing we've done in the past 30 years justifies thinking we're the best people in the history of the world. Even before the collapse into wokism (itself a green eyed demon in a pretty mask), the movies of fight club and the matrix both spoke to generations that sensed something was going wrong even then, and far from improving since then it seems we've gotten worse.
Even the boomers I think if we apply the same standards to the millennials it becomes clear we are their children, and we carry the same critical flaws and are doing a lot of the same things. The debt rose to 32 trillion dollars on the signature of presidents elected by millennials.
It's easy to judge our ancestors for not living as we do, but we live with the benefits of many things they do not. You need food, and you need shelter, and you need protection from people who would otherwise take your food and shelter because they don't have any. Living in global civilization that all seems simple and straightforward, but youtube channels like how to make everything or primitive technology challenge these ideas by showing how hard it is to make these things even if you know that they can exist, and if you don't need to figure out where your next meal is coming from, and if you don't need to worry about raiders coming and taking your stuff, or bears and wolves coming and eating you. And you can't rely on the wealth of a global civilization to bootstrap you because you are that bootstrap of future civilizations. So you end up using less than ideal solutions -- like the Romans used slavery or the kings after Rome used feudalism.
I'm not intending to be a moral relativist here. Good and evil exist because we are humans and such things are fundamental to our being, and enslaving others is evil. But the world isn't so easy that everyone can afford to be good and have their civilization survive.
In my view, nothing we've done in the past 30 years justifies thinking we're the best people in the history of the world. Even before the collapse into wokism (itself a green eyed demon in a pretty mask), the movies of fight club and the matrix both spoke to generations that sensed something was going wrong even then, and far from improving since then it seems we've gotten worse.
Even the boomers I think if we apply the same standards to the millennials it becomes clear we are their children, and we carry the same critical flaws and are doing a lot of the same things. The debt rose to 32 trillion dollars on the signature of presidents elected by millennials.
It's easy to judge our ancestors for not living as we do, but we live with the benefits of many things they do not. You need food, and you need shelter, and you need protection from people who would otherwise take your food and shelter because they don't have any. Living in global civilization that all seems simple and straightforward, but youtube channels like how to make everything or primitive technology challenge these ideas by showing how hard it is to make these things even if you know that they can exist, and if you don't need to figure out where your next meal is coming from, and if you don't need to worry about raiders coming and taking your stuff, or bears and wolves coming and eating you. And you can't rely on the wealth of a global civilization to bootstrap you because you are that bootstrap of future civilizations. So you end up using less than ideal solutions -- like the Romans used slavery or the kings after Rome used feudalism.
I'm not intending to be a moral relativist here. Good and evil exist because we are humans and such things are fundamental to our being, and enslaving others is evil. But the world isn't so easy that everyone can afford to be good and have their civilization survive.
Some people have started to claim that America has no culture. People who say stuff like that look like a fish in a tank criticizing their tank, dreaming of going to the lake beside them without realizing you are a saltwater fish and that's a freshwater lake, and you're a tropical fish and that lake is 4C. You look at that lake longingly, but if you were ever released into it you'd immediately die of at least 3 different things.
America has its problems, but a lack of culture is not one of them. Entire genres of music were created in America. Even in its weakened state, Hollywood still dominates filmmaking. America has produced some of the greatest novelists of all time including names like Mark Twain. The writings of the founding fathers on Government and the subsequent culture of freedom and later of diversity had global influences. Japan's anime industry is a direct descendant of Disney films. Phrases devised in the US end up trickling over to other parts of the world so countries that had the people living there living there for thousands of years claim "We're a nation of immigrants". The entire world watched TV shows like The Daily Show or MASH. Much of the world celebrates a form of the American holiday "Thanksgiving".
That's not to say America's culture is perfect or that there aren't things that need to change, but absolutely there is American culture, and it's had an outsized global influence. Hell, there's italian and japanese westerns even though neither of those places ever had a west to win.
Just as the fish in a tank doesn't realize what the tank has granted them, anyone claiming America has no culture doesn't realize how much that culture surrounds them and permeates them and how bad things could get without it.
I'll go one step further here and point out that Canada is in the same boat. People claim Canada has no culture, but that's only because it's hard to see since we live in this tank. Occasionally something comes out that is about Canadian culture that blows up and you get to see how unique the country actually is. I'm not sure of any country on earth where The Pukatawagan Song would become a sleeper hit, but The Tragically hip wrote songs specifically about being Canadian as well, such as Thompson girl or Bobcaygeon. The reference to a place is one thing, but then the lyrics also talk about specific things that are unique to the local culture as well.
America has its problems, but a lack of culture is not one of them. Entire genres of music were created in America. Even in its weakened state, Hollywood still dominates filmmaking. America has produced some of the greatest novelists of all time including names like Mark Twain. The writings of the founding fathers on Government and the subsequent culture of freedom and later of diversity had global influences. Japan's anime industry is a direct descendant of Disney films. Phrases devised in the US end up trickling over to other parts of the world so countries that had the people living there living there for thousands of years claim "We're a nation of immigrants". The entire world watched TV shows like The Daily Show or MASH. Much of the world celebrates a form of the American holiday "Thanksgiving".
That's not to say America's culture is perfect or that there aren't things that need to change, but absolutely there is American culture, and it's had an outsized global influence. Hell, there's italian and japanese westerns even though neither of those places ever had a west to win.
Just as the fish in a tank doesn't realize what the tank has granted them, anyone claiming America has no culture doesn't realize how much that culture surrounds them and permeates them and how bad things could get without it.
I'll go one step further here and point out that Canada is in the same boat. People claim Canada has no culture, but that's only because it's hard to see since we live in this tank. Occasionally something comes out that is about Canadian culture that blows up and you get to see how unique the country actually is. I'm not sure of any country on earth where The Pukatawagan Song would become a sleeper hit, but The Tragically hip wrote songs specifically about being Canadian as well, such as Thompson girl or Bobcaygeon. The reference to a place is one thing, but then the lyrics also talk about specific things that are unique to the local culture as well.
School is a pretty lucrative racket. I volunteered to speak at the local college once, and it was immediately obvious that there weren't a lot of locals in the room.
Ironically, we know that these people would have been the ones shoving jews into boxcars in 1938.
Hell, many of them are calling for the death of all Jews in Israel right now. "We hate nazis! We need to punch nazis! Death to Israel!"
Hell, many of them are calling for the death of all Jews in Israel right now. "We hate nazis! We need to punch nazis! Death to Israel!"
More like "this very expensive piece of paper says I can get a shitty job that at least might pay rent if I have 7 roommates."
OMG I didn't even get into rent, but it's thousands of dollars a month. That's insane. My first apartment in a decent area of town was a 2-bedroom and cost 350/mo. Forget tuition, I couldn't afford rent if I had to go to college today.
OMG I didn't even get into rent, but it's thousands of dollars a month. That's insane. My first apartment in a decent area of town was a 2-bedroom and cost 350/mo. Forget tuition, I couldn't afford rent if I had to go to college today.
I've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating: Canada is near the top of the pack when it comes to the number of people with post-secondary education.
That sounds like a good thing, but in reality I think it speaks to an underlying weakness in Canada. People aren't going to college because they *can*. They're going to college because they feel they *must*.
The cost of housing isn't a problem that popped up yesterday. When I was a teenager, you could buy a house in some places for $50,000. Today, in most of Canada the same house would be easily $500,000 (and in some cities it's $1,000,000 or more). I'm old, but I'm not "10x inflation" old. Food prices have skyrocketed. Internet prices have skyrocketed (High speed Internet used to be 20 bucks a month, today that's the sales tax on my internet bill). I pumped gas to pay for college, fuel used to be 60 cents a litre, today it's 1.60. Electricity in most places has doubled or more.
If you're a hard worker but you haven't gotten onto the class treadmill, then there's a good chance you can't afford a life. So people get on that treadmill and start running just to stay in place. Meanwhile, the politicians act as if there's actually unlimited prosperity to go around.
South Korea is in a similar state. It's another outlier with very high postsecondary education, and it's another places where people need to stay on the treadmill or they'll get thrown on the floor hard.
That sounds like a good thing, but in reality I think it speaks to an underlying weakness in Canada. People aren't going to college because they *can*. They're going to college because they feel they *must*.
The cost of housing isn't a problem that popped up yesterday. When I was a teenager, you could buy a house in some places for $50,000. Today, in most of Canada the same house would be easily $500,000 (and in some cities it's $1,000,000 or more). I'm old, but I'm not "10x inflation" old. Food prices have skyrocketed. Internet prices have skyrocketed (High speed Internet used to be 20 bucks a month, today that's the sales tax on my internet bill). I pumped gas to pay for college, fuel used to be 60 cents a litre, today it's 1.60. Electricity in most places has doubled or more.
If you're a hard worker but you haven't gotten onto the class treadmill, then there's a good chance you can't afford a life. So people get on that treadmill and start running just to stay in place. Meanwhile, the politicians act as if there's actually unlimited prosperity to go around.
South Korea is in a similar state. It's another outlier with very high postsecondary education, and it's another places where people need to stay on the treadmill or they'll get thrown on the floor hard.
I definitely agree with you in this regard. One of the biggest problems of the moment is the gap between haves and have-nots and the shrinking group that it is in between. Many things we're seeing is people with a little more than most trying desperately not to get caught in the musical chairs as the pie shrinks for most of the world.
That being said, power imbalance is something we can't help but have as humans who are all different so systems that help to reduce mass power imbalances or unearned power imbalances are important, and you can't just power through that, it takes nuance to get there or you just create a new power system to be imbalanced.
That being said, power imbalance is something we can't help but have as humans who are all different so systems that help to reduce mass power imbalances or unearned power imbalances are important, and you can't just power through that, it takes nuance to get there or you just create a new power system to be imbalanced.
People claim that money is evil, that accumulating money is evil, and that all we have to do is abolish money and all evil will disappear.
In reality, money is just pieces of paper or numbers in a computer or pieces of shiny rocks. It isn't good or evil. The thing that makes people crazy is the power it represents, to be able to take something for yourself, or to get someone else to do something you want them to. If you take it away, you have unlimited desires and limited resources and so another method needs to come about to determine how to divvy up power, and unfortunately the alternative is monsterous because we're humans who have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
So if getting rid of money won't solve people's drive for more power, how do we abolish such evils? I don't really think you do as long as you've got people thinking in terms of power. In that sense, the postmodern neomarxists and the nietzschians are both terribly wrong, and looking at the world in terms of power is self-destructive. Instead of a will to power, we should be striving for a will to awe, and strive to become people we are impressed with ourselves.
Being true to oneself (because some people try to become "impressive" based on what they're supposed to find impressive rather than what they actually find impressive) and striving to be that best person you can imagine rather than focusing on accumulating power I think would help the world, as long as that striving has some understandings that for example you can't cheat the devil -- If you cheat on your way to becoming awesome, then you will know deep down you aren't.
In reality, money is just pieces of paper or numbers in a computer or pieces of shiny rocks. It isn't good or evil. The thing that makes people crazy is the power it represents, to be able to take something for yourself, or to get someone else to do something you want them to. If you take it away, you have unlimited desires and limited resources and so another method needs to come about to determine how to divvy up power, and unfortunately the alternative is monsterous because we're humans who have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
So if getting rid of money won't solve people's drive for more power, how do we abolish such evils? I don't really think you do as long as you've got people thinking in terms of power. In that sense, the postmodern neomarxists and the nietzschians are both terribly wrong, and looking at the world in terms of power is self-destructive. Instead of a will to power, we should be striving for a will to awe, and strive to become people we are impressed with ourselves.
Being true to oneself (because some people try to become "impressive" based on what they're supposed to find impressive rather than what they actually find impressive) and striving to be that best person you can imagine rather than focusing on accumulating power I think would help the world, as long as that striving has some understandings that for example you can't cheat the devil -- If you cheat on your way to becoming awesome, then you will know deep down you aren't.
"what proof do you have? That giant pile of direct evidence? The court cases you keep on winning? The news stories from Pulitzer prize winning journalists? Pffft all far right disinformation."
It's easy to forget amidst the art and architecture and military accomplishments of the Roman empire that it was a particularly brutal slave state.
To be clear, most civilizations of the time had slavery in one form or another, but the combination of the fact that Romans implemented chattel slavery where slaves were purely property, and the dictatorial powers the patriarch of the family had over slaves, women, and children in his family combined to have a wide range of permissible behavior towards those who didn't have any social power.
Though to be fair, we need to also remember that just because a state didn't have slavery didn't mean it was a modern liberal democracy. Often, they didn't have slavery in name but the lowest classes of society might as well have been slaves for the level of control they had over their lives.
As an example, after the roman empire fell many European states didn't have slavery but feudalism tied people to the land and gave their lords overwhelming power over them meaning they had a similar lack of control over their own lives.
To be clear, most civilizations of the time had slavery in one form or another, but the combination of the fact that Romans implemented chattel slavery where slaves were purely property, and the dictatorial powers the patriarch of the family had over slaves, women, and children in his family combined to have a wide range of permissible behavior towards those who didn't have any social power.
Though to be fair, we need to also remember that just because a state didn't have slavery didn't mean it was a modern liberal democracy. Often, they didn't have slavery in name but the lowest classes of society might as well have been slaves for the level of control they had over their lives.
As an example, after the roman empire fell many European states didn't have slavery but feudalism tied people to the land and gave their lords overwhelming power over them meaning they had a similar lack of control over their own lives.
It sure seems like MK Ultra is the gift that keeps on giving. "We created all these psychopaths, so you better give us more power to save you from all these psychopaths who exist because of reasons unrelated to our unethical medical experiments even though a surprising number of them were involved with them!"
Can't get directly to my log files right now, but I opened up the log aggregator and didn't see anything of note.
I'd expect that anyone running a scraper would just hit a big instance instead of us. They'd get most of our posts through osmosis anyway.
I'd expect that anyone running a scraper would just hit a big instance instead of us. They'd get most of our posts through osmosis anyway.
I'll go on about freedom of expression all day long, but even I block spammers.
I hope a blue whale materalizes over their house and crushes it with them inside.
I hope a blue whale materalizes over their house and crushes it with them inside.
In the United States at least, it's already been argued and won in court that the police have no duty to serve and protect. If you call up because your kids are about to be murdered, and they do absolutely nothing for 4 days, and your kids are in fact murdered, well I guess you should have raised less murderable kids.
I've got respect for many police. There are people who walk towards situations that many of us would run away from and have to deal with the thankless task of dealing with situations without a win scenario. Regardless, the institution itself is no less corrupt than any other government institution.
I've got respect for many police. There are people who walk towards situations that many of us would run away from and have to deal with the thankless task of dealing with situations without a win scenario. Regardless, the institution itself is no less corrupt than any other government institution.
I lowkey love that the two things getting liked and shared in my notifications this morning are a joke about sharing your ballsack with your bros and a post about the historical political context of the american revolution.
The duality of man.
The duality of man.