We wouldn't get "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court" for sure.
Many people wouldn't even be able to read.
Many people wouldn't even be able to read.
[Admin Mode] Had to do some infrastructure work tonight, basically I had some key infrastructure in an awkward place up in a drop ceiling. I moved it to a shelf I built, still in the ceiling (up in some floor joists) but more accessible in a utility room.
If you just try to tax "the rich" more, the rich aren't going to get taxed. You're just going to be stealing more from the poor to hand to the rich unless you deal with the fundamental problem.
I've got a huge problem with who gets defined as "the rich". The guy who shovels shit in a mine and saves money for retirement can end up first of all being charged over half of their last dollar made on tax (especially if you include vat and sin taxes), because on paper the guy shovelling shit is "rich" and "one of the millionaires and the billionaires". Surprise surprise, it turns out that when you implement tax the rich policies the guy shoveling shit for a living ends up paying.
You've made the mistake of assuming that the government isn't the ruling class. And what does the ruling class do? It rewards its cronies. So what's going to happen if you give the ruling class more power? They're going to use it to further reward their cronies and harm those who disagree with them.
Totalizing state power is the definition of fascism. State worship is within the definition of fascism. Public corporations (the so-called NGOs) working in lockstep with the state is within the definition of fascism. And I don't mean internet fascism as in people I don't agree with doing things I don't agree with, I mean actual Benito Mussolini's economic policies sort of fascism. I've written at length about this in an upcoming book, but there's more to life than the state and the markets. These two forces individually want to control everything, but end up happy to work together to split everything in the world up between the two of them instead. This is where the marxists are correct that the state is the tool of the rich, but the liberals are also correct that the rich are the tool of the state. Both are true, and both use each other against the broader culture.
If you want the government to help the poor, there are two things that they can do: first, it can get its boot off of the poor's neck. A bunch of police coming to a lower class comedians house and arresting him for teaching his girlfriend's dog to do a Nazi salute isn't helping the poor. Second, with a fraction of the money it already has they could do plenty, just stop giving the money to your buddies, stop giving the money to ultra megacorps, and spend the money that they are already taking in on the things that they use to explain why they need more money all the time.
I've got a huge problem with who gets defined as "the rich". The guy who shovels shit in a mine and saves money for retirement can end up first of all being charged over half of their last dollar made on tax (especially if you include vat and sin taxes), because on paper the guy shovelling shit is "rich" and "one of the millionaires and the billionaires". Surprise surprise, it turns out that when you implement tax the rich policies the guy shoveling shit for a living ends up paying.
You've made the mistake of assuming that the government isn't the ruling class. And what does the ruling class do? It rewards its cronies. So what's going to happen if you give the ruling class more power? They're going to use it to further reward their cronies and harm those who disagree with them.
Totalizing state power is the definition of fascism. State worship is within the definition of fascism. Public corporations (the so-called NGOs) working in lockstep with the state is within the definition of fascism. And I don't mean internet fascism as in people I don't agree with doing things I don't agree with, I mean actual Benito Mussolini's economic policies sort of fascism. I've written at length about this in an upcoming book, but there's more to life than the state and the markets. These two forces individually want to control everything, but end up happy to work together to split everything in the world up between the two of them instead. This is where the marxists are correct that the state is the tool of the rich, but the liberals are also correct that the rich are the tool of the state. Both are true, and both use each other against the broader culture.
If you want the government to help the poor, there are two things that they can do: first, it can get its boot off of the poor's neck. A bunch of police coming to a lower class comedians house and arresting him for teaching his girlfriend's dog to do a Nazi salute isn't helping the poor. Second, with a fraction of the money it already has they could do plenty, just stop giving the money to your buddies, stop giving the money to ultra megacorps, and spend the money that they are already taking in on the things that they use to explain why they need more money all the time.
The world you were raised in no longer exists. Our lives keep going unless we reject them.
In my home country of Canada, inciting someone to commit suicide is the official policy for dealing with pesky veterans and disabled people.
I just watched an academic giving a short presentation in which the first slide complained that RFK was allowed to have opinions he didn't like, and on the next slide complained that on Twitter opinions that he liked were being censored.
Find it really funny that there's an implicit demand in the intro that the rich and powerful censor unacceptable ideas, while immediately afterwards complaining that some of the Rich and powerful censored their unacceptable ideas. The one solid meme the left have come up with in the last 20 years is the "leopards eating your face party" -- these people want the leopards to eat faces, they just didn't expect leopards would want to eat their face.
Long before Elon Musk purchased twitter, I warned against being a fascist in The Graysonian Ethic. The argument that I made in that book was specifically that you think that the people who abuse power will only abuse power against your enemies, but it has never ever ever worked that way. The people you think on your side will always turn on you if you give them the power to.
Find it really funny that there's an implicit demand in the intro that the rich and powerful censor unacceptable ideas, while immediately afterwards complaining that some of the Rich and powerful censored their unacceptable ideas. The one solid meme the left have come up with in the last 20 years is the "leopards eating your face party" -- these people want the leopards to eat faces, they just didn't expect leopards would want to eat their face.
Long before Elon Musk purchased twitter, I warned against being a fascist in The Graysonian Ethic. The argument that I made in that book was specifically that you think that the people who abuse power will only abuse power against your enemies, but it has never ever ever worked that way. The people you think on your side will always turn on you if you give them the power to.
Good progress editing Future Sepsis. My first editing pass is just playing the work back using TTS. A lot of the time stuff that's correct on paper doesn't sound right when it's read aloud. After I've edited a section in this pass, I dump it into the file with the correct formatting. Lots of easy mistakes I caught.
I recorded the Audio Book of The Graysonian Ethic long after the book was finalized, and as a result editing the audio book I found a lot of mistakes, which is one reason why I decided to make that the preliminary pass.
I was going to do an AI editing pass, but after using AI a lot, I've decided against it -- I just don't feel like the language it spits out is what I'm looking for.
Final editing pass is sending it to an editor who did a good job on The Graysonian Ethic.
Once that last editing pass is done, I'll be ready to put it up for sale.
I recorded the Audio Book of The Graysonian Ethic long after the book was finalized, and as a result editing the audio book I found a lot of mistakes, which is one reason why I decided to make that the preliminary pass.
I was going to do an AI editing pass, but after using AI a lot, I've decided against it -- I just don't feel like the language it spits out is what I'm looking for.
Final editing pass is sending it to an editor who did a good job on The Graysonian Ethic.
Once that last editing pass is done, I'll be ready to put it up for sale.
Think about this: between 1990 and 1995, Microsoft completely rebuilt windows from the ground up into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
Next, between 1995 and 2001, Microsoft completely rebuilt windows again from the ground up into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
From 2001 to 2006, Microsoft completely rebuilt Windows yet again from the ground up into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
Windows 7 occurred with it in the next 6 year window, but it was more of a smoothing out of all the rough edges of the previously rebuilt windows. However, Windows 8 occurred in the next six year window, and it was once again a fundamentally rebuild windows into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
It's been over 10 years since the release of Windows 8, but when you really think about it it's been a completely stagnant product ever since.
On the other hand, this narrative really misses something else: from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, Microsoft essentially had to completely change how configuration was done. From 95 to xp, they had to completely change how most things were done. From XP to 7, a lot of things are still done the same way that they were done in XP, and from 7 to today a surprising number of things are still done the way they were in XP.
There might be some good arguments against taking away the old ways of doing things, but I would push back on the idea that the only reason that nothing is moved forward is that Microsoft doesn't want to break anything. In particular, the settings app still doesn't do most of the things that the old win32 utilities did and still do, and so you aren't just going back to the old way of doing things because you're old and set in your ways, you're doing it because Microsoft has failed over nearly 25 years to produce a utility to do the same thing. In some ways if you're using just straight windows 10 or 11, it feels like you're using a janky Linux distribution from 15 years ago.
Ironically, Microsoft also tries to pretend that the problem is the user by trying to hide the old utilities version after version and people have to go chase them down because you still can't do so many very basic things with stuff like the settings app. I'm sorry Microsoft that I'm having to go back to the network connections page to set up my network connections instead of your shiny new settings app, but I need to do some stuff the majority of which you can't do from your shiny new settings app.
If it was just a matter of trying to keep things the same workflow as before then the same stuff would be in the same place, but that's not the case. Over the course of windows 10, buttons for the same thing have moved all over hells half acre, fundamental stuff like the start menu has catastrophically changed in between minor revisions of Windows all the way since Windows 8. Newark econ show up, old icons disappear, any idea that Windows is being kept the way it is because they're trying to maintain workflows evaporates upon contact with reality.
Next, between 1995 and 2001, Microsoft completely rebuilt windows again from the ground up into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
From 2001 to 2006, Microsoft completely rebuilt Windows yet again from the ground up into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
Windows 7 occurred with it in the next 6 year window, but it was more of a smoothing out of all the rough edges of the previously rebuilt windows. However, Windows 8 occurred in the next six year window, and it was once again a fundamentally rebuild windows into a fundamentally different type of operating system.
It's been over 10 years since the release of Windows 8, but when you really think about it it's been a completely stagnant product ever since.
On the other hand, this narrative really misses something else: from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, Microsoft essentially had to completely change how configuration was done. From 95 to xp, they had to completely change how most things were done. From XP to 7, a lot of things are still done the same way that they were done in XP, and from 7 to today a surprising number of things are still done the way they were in XP.
There might be some good arguments against taking away the old ways of doing things, but I would push back on the idea that the only reason that nothing is moved forward is that Microsoft doesn't want to break anything. In particular, the settings app still doesn't do most of the things that the old win32 utilities did and still do, and so you aren't just going back to the old way of doing things because you're old and set in your ways, you're doing it because Microsoft has failed over nearly 25 years to produce a utility to do the same thing. In some ways if you're using just straight windows 10 or 11, it feels like you're using a janky Linux distribution from 15 years ago.
Ironically, Microsoft also tries to pretend that the problem is the user by trying to hide the old utilities version after version and people have to go chase them down because you still can't do so many very basic things with stuff like the settings app. I'm sorry Microsoft that I'm having to go back to the network connections page to set up my network connections instead of your shiny new settings app, but I need to do some stuff the majority of which you can't do from your shiny new settings app.
If it was just a matter of trying to keep things the same workflow as before then the same stuff would be in the same place, but that's not the case. Over the course of windows 10, buttons for the same thing have moved all over hells half acre, fundamental stuff like the start menu has catastrophically changed in between minor revisions of Windows all the way since Windows 8. Newark econ show up, old icons disappear, any idea that Windows is being kept the way it is because they're trying to maintain workflows evaporates upon contact with reality.
When I first got out of college I had that sort of doe eyed attitude. I felt -- correctly -- the fact that I had managed to get through college with relatively little debt, in a field that had decent demand, and managed to get a decent enough job right out of college, had a lot of elements of pure luck and I happened to roll the dice well.
There was a time period where I went out hoping to lift up others who hadn't had the same good luck I did.
After years of sacrifice, the subjects of my charity were no closer to self-sufficiency, but we're very well taken care of in terms of grooming and gadgets, and were endowed with a deep resentment that I hadn't given even more.
For people outside my immediate family, I've learned I need to give help that's constrained by cost, scope, and time. Do a specific thing and when it's over it's over, because otherwise you become just an exploitable resource. For my wife and kids, it needs to be a leadership first approach that instills and aligns values before providing material resources. For my kids in particular, I'll be dead someday soon (relatively speaking) and they won't be able to rely on me for help for most of their own lives.
There was a time period where I went out hoping to lift up others who hadn't had the same good luck I did.
After years of sacrifice, the subjects of my charity were no closer to self-sufficiency, but we're very well taken care of in terms of grooming and gadgets, and were endowed with a deep resentment that I hadn't given even more.
For people outside my immediate family, I've learned I need to give help that's constrained by cost, scope, and time. Do a specific thing and when it's over it's over, because otherwise you become just an exploitable resource. For my wife and kids, it needs to be a leadership first approach that instills and aligns values before providing material resources. For my kids in particular, I'll be dead someday soon (relatively speaking) and they won't be able to rely on me for help for most of their own lives.
It's pretty impressive! I guess we don't even have an executive or a legislature anymore, it's all just judiciary all the way down.
Look, I'm impressed at how cute this picture is, but what I'm really impressed by is how clean that keyboard is.
Unfortunately, anyone with three quarters of a brain in Canada leaves (apparently I'm stuck at half a brain) so we end up with someone like former bank of England chair Mark Carney as head of government, and he brings back all his euro retardation with him.
I'm more expressing general frustration given what's happening here, it isn't a personal attack on you.