This video that starts off talking about how dumb Joe Rogan is—a relatively easy target—was fine but it contained an absolute banger of a revolutionary call from Hasan.

JOE IS SO GONE… by HasanAbi (YouTube)

“What has stopped you from giving up? Not only am I an unimaginably stubborn person, but I also have a firm belief in my fellow man. I believe in you guys in this community. I believe in people that I haven’t met yet. I believe in the kindness of strangers. I know that we can overcome this. I can’t just give up. And I know... [More]”

This documentary was originally released as Das Netz in German. The narration is in German, with hard-coded English subtitles. Many of the interviews are in English.

The Net − the Unabomber, LSD and the Internet by Lutz Dammbeck in 2003 (YouTube)

In a way, the people interviewed in this documentary are similar to the ones I’d just seen in Cybertopia. They are largely unaware of their own shallowness, enamored by their own capacity to think, doling out the few morsels of knowledge that a younger, more mentally nimble self had collected, but also largely incurious now. The... [More]

A good reminder:

1. Remember what you’ve learned and what you know.

   • Carry your own context into battle.
   • Do not accept the illegitimate, mendacious, and bad-faith framing of the enemy.
2. Do not let them run the conversation.

   • Waste as little time as possible refuting lies that it’s obvious even they don’t believe.
   • Stay focused on important topics; do not be distracted by their chaff.

Be the white cat

This video of a discussion between Anand Giridharadas and Chris Hedges is worth the hour you’ll invest in it.

The segment starting around 40:00 was fantastic. It’s about how we don’t appreciate the heroic amount of work required to keep civilization going—work done by states, despite corporations—so that many of us don’t have to think about survival at all, and can focus on thriving.

We are being encouraged to dismantle these things because those who have benefitted greatly —and... [More]

The official response in the U.S. to the shooting of Renee Nicole Good is exactly the one you expect from an authoritarian state. No pity. No remorse. No empathy. They slander and lie and smear.

People crawl out of the woodwork to parse the event, proving that she was a terrorist.

It’s monstrous.

It is the sign of a deeply sick society, a broken culture.

These people exhibit such a deep lack of empathy, and such a disinterest in ensuring that this never happens again.

They need—and kind... [More]

I have some time off and I’ve been working through a backlog of writing that I’ve wanted to copy-edit and finish for a long time. I have hundreds of pages of book citations, half-written book reviews, nearly draft movie reviews, and hundreds of articles in varied fields all “mostly” ready to publish but lacking what I consider to be a final polish.

About five years ago, I partly addressed this by inaugurating my weekly notes, a place where the flurry of writing, notes, thoughts, responses, and... [More]

The article It’s Not Socialism–It’s National Socialism by Liz Anderson (Crooked Timber) discusses how buying 10% of Intel does not a socialist make.

“When National Socialists speak of “the people,” they never mean, as social democrats do, all the people, but rather the “real” people, the ethno-racial-sexual-religious group that they identify with the nation, to the exclusion of all other citizens and denizens of the state.

“OtheringTrump, of course, checks all 3 National Socialist boxes. It’s no secret that his “real”... [More]”

The article What Our World Sounds Like Now by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet) discusses how the grinding progress of the market toward maximizing margins by delivering the minimum amount of value that satisfies—sometimes by adjusting value delivered but mostly now by adjusting people’s expectations downward of what is satisfactory—affects music and how AI-produced music is a natural progression from blandly mediocre musical blasphemers of the past—who produced “lite” versions of everything: easy listening and muzak, which... [More]

The article Influencerism is the highest form of capitalist realism by Yasha Levine (Nefarious Russians) makes many interesting points, many of which have been made before, in other ways—perhaps most famously and thoroughly in Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent—but it almost always bears repeating because the lessons are so often and easily forgotten.

“[…] these technologies, while they have thrown off the old masters, have acquired a new one. And this new master is harder to see. It’s not a person who tells you what you can... [More]”

Neutrality means sending aid—food, water, medicine, doctors—where it’s needed, condemning crimes where they occur, and working diplomatically toward a ceasefire, then peace accords. The only thing neutrality excludes is military participation—sending weapons and/or troops. And yet. there is always a laser-like focus on that part.

Switzerland is a neutral country but no-one can stand it. Each “side” claims that there is no such thing as neutrality, that there is only the side of good,... [More]

One thing that I’ve noticed that’s changed from when I was younger is that I’m genuinely no longer threatened by people living lives different from mine anymore. That is, I’m not threatened by simply knowing that there are other people out there doing things differently, or believing different things, or simply finding solace or reassurance in things that I think are completely unfounded in reality or foolish. I haven’t stopped feeling that they’d be foolish for me; I just realize that it... [More]

This video is a wonderful discussion of what it will mean to offload knowledge and wisdom to machines. Professor Asma discusses how humans have always offloaded to the environment to a certain degree. He argues that offloading to LLMs is like “the man in Searle’s Chinese Room”. I think that this offloading of knowledge and still believing that it would be a path to wisdom already began with the “just Google it” generation.

AI and the Post-Knowledge World by Professor Asma (YouTube)

The trend toward offloading knowledge—a little something called... [More]

This is a clip from 20 years ago. It’s 3 a.m. and Private Equity is Extending an Invitation to “The Big Club” by Eric Salzman (Racket News) linked to it to point out that the vultures of Wall Street have been after Social Security for a long time.

The American Dream by George Carlin (YouTube)

🎩 h/t to George Carlin on the American Dream (with transcript) by Shoq (Shoqvalue) for the initial transcript. I’ve tweaked it a bit more, mostly for punctuation.

“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same... [More]”

The article The Who Cares Era by Dan Sinker describes this era as a time when

“[…] completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.”

He writes further that,

“If you don’t care, [AI] is miraculous. If you do, the illusion falls apart pretty quickly.”

And that,

“Most people […] use it quickly and thoughtlessly to make more mediocrity.”

He gives what I consider to be good but probably career-killing advice in the our era. I really hope its not because I’m an optimist.

“As the... [More]”

The article Liberals Believe In Nothing And Remember Even Less by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) writes about how most people don’t actually stand for anything. They don’t have principles; they root for a team. She writes,

“I saw a post on Twitter where a leftist responded to a liberal who was acting like ICE just suddenly transformed into a modern gestapo under Trump, saying, “Liberals believe in nothing and remember even less.”

“And it’s just so true. They don’t believe in anything. They don’t stand for anything.... [More]”

A friend sent me The Insidious Libertarian-to-Alt-Right Pipeline by Matt Lewis (The Daily Beast). It’s OK. He said it was 2/5 but was interested in my opinion on it.

I wrote him something like the following (it’s lightly edited for clarity):

LarpingLibertarianism is a superficial dead-end that has a deeply unempathetic core. While its proponents will tell you all day long that communism could never work because people suck, they never acknowledge that, by that logic, libertarianism is doomed to the same Hobbesian nightmare for the... [More]

A friend asked me recently for ideas for a career talk they were giving at a university (or for university students). I wrote the following (more or less).

I’m sure you’ll not be able to use any of them because I am uniquely unsuited for our world but what the hell: I can’t resist the challenge.

Be valuable

If you’re lucky, then you’ll only spend ½ of your waking life during your prime years on your career.

That’s a lot of time. That time passes more quickly when you do something... [More]

The poem in Tell me Something I don’t Know by Jim Culleny (3QuarksDaily) isn’t deeply thought-provoking or revelatory but it does what poetry does best: it seems to distill meaning from elegantly juxtaposed words.

“Tell me how to weave
tomorrow into yesterday
without tangling, without
strangling today”

You see? I love it but I don’t know what it means. Not yet.

A poetic friend wrote to tell me that,

“About the poets and their words. Can you ‘know’ what they mean? Nope! Like a good question maybe we can “die Fragen selbst... [More]”

As usual, Natalie Wynn puts together an interesting analysis of a difficult issue. As usual, in a giant video; this one is 160 minutes long. It’s not a well-balanced analysis—as you can tell from my article’s title—but entertaining enough and honestly about the best we can hope for, at this point. I don’t think anyone who’s researching conspiracy theories is likely to ever notice the conspiracy theories that “their own side” believed in or continues to believe in.

CONSPIRACY by Contrapoints (YouTube)

At 20:00,

I’m... [More]

The article Is it Possible to Read Walden When You Own a Smartphone? by Rebecca Baumgartner (3 Quarks Daily) writes of reading Thoreau in the 21st century,

“[…] is it the content that’s boring, or are we simply less capable of appreciating it? I propose that we’re the boring ones. Or more precisely, our thinking is too small and frantic to follow where Thoreau’s mind goes. It’s the same reason we find meditation so hard and boring. It’s the same reason most of us haven’t stared off into space at all in the past 15... [More]”

This is an excellent video essay about art, punk, edginess, featuring many of my favorite directors, musicians, and comedians. I can’t remember everyone but man, there’s Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Frank Zappa, Marilyn Manson, Patrice O’Neal, John Waters, Lars von Trier, Bill Hicks (“an anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian dark poet”), Paul Mooney, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky…the list goes on.

Nothing is punk anymore… by The Cinema Cartography (YouTube)

Bill Hicks, at 33:35 (cited from Rants in E-Minor),

“Bill HicksLet me tell you something right now... [More]”

A while ago, I listened to all 3½ hours of Hinternet Production Labs — An Audio Launch Event! by Justin Smith-Ruiu. It is pretty cool. I’m glad I listened to it. I was working on a jigsaw puzzle the whole time.

Listening to this feels like having a Wikipedia binge that leads from Yakut to rock music, the etymology of the epithet “Willard”, the application of the definition of said epithet to bands after a lengthy discussion achieves consensus, an immediately ensuing discussion debating to which musical acts... [More]

This is a brilliant 52-minute interview with the author of a book whose title is already being misinterpreted by misguided liberals as being about Trump. More’s the pity. The author is young and brilliant. May he have a long and illustrious life and career.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) by The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube)

At about 09:42,

“All of this sort of stuff, I think, makes perfect sense if you believe in a world where there are only two options: you are either wearing the boot or you’re having your neck stepped on. And, so, to speak up on behalf of... [More]”

I wrote the following quip to a friend the other day, “Charisma is an underrated stat,” to which they replied quite pithily,

“Charisma is underrated in the engineering space. A charismatic engineer is often labeled as a “charlatan” or “all bark no bite” or “a sales guy”, but what the people who say that often gloss over is the fact that a charismatic engineer is often really labeled as a CEO.”

Charisma 20+Perhaps a better word than “underrated” is “unnoticed”. It’s the stat that hides itself. Part of the... [More]

I’ve seen that people in Europe and Switzerland are starting to proudly boycott U.S.-American products, as if they’re standing on a principle or something.

They are not anti-Empire. They are anti-Trump.

They are pissed at Trump for having “abandoned” Ukraine and Europe, which they think leaves them wide open to be invaded within weeks by what they call the U.S.‘s new ally Russia.

This is almost laughably stupid, if it weren’t such a prevalent view among otherwise intelligent and... [More]

The article Trump vs. the Deep State by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) included the following passage as part of a longer discussion .

“I do not think, I mean to say, the deep state’s presence in America’s political life will ever be off the table now that Trump has put its insidious presence on it. This is a good thing.”

I wouldn’t be too sure of that. People are remarkably capable of going back to sleep, especially when their salaries depend on it, especially when their lifestyles depend on it, and especially with an... [More]

A very good friend is riding in Utah right now.[1] They’ve gotten a lot of snow—70" in a few days—and the sun is finally out again. He’s been doing some “farming”, where you pick a clean field of powder and you lay down a track, using as little of the snow as you can. You go back up. You lay down another track, just like the first, but shifted. You’re making furrows; you’re farming the field.

Snowboard farming

I was telling other friends about this recently, when skiing in Klosters/Davos, I was explaining... [More]

The comic Resident Philosopher for AI Ethics by Corey Mohler (Existential Comics) explains how the ideas of a philosopher who died over a century ago are not only applicable today, but are vital to understand if we want to come out the other side intact.

Resident Philosopher for AI Ethics

“Your entire business model is to take control of the free exchange of information, and manipulate it for your personal gain!

“See this chart? The red portion is what you created. The blue portion is what you built off pre-existing open source technology, science and stolen... [More]”

This is a ~45-minute video with a wide-ranging discussion what it says on the tin—mostly the importance of critical thinking.

Facts, fictions and critical thinking | The Future of Decision Making | Nobel Prize Dialogue Sydney by Nobel Prize (YouTube)

At about 30:00,

“Tim: I also think it’s about what we get cred for. And this is a lot further down the track, but people get cred at the moment for being sure, and [for] being declarative. And that’s good and certainly in activism that can be very, very important. And it can create good change but it’s mostly not at the moment. Mostly it’s causing tribalization. And... [More]”

Penn & TellerThe article An Unreasonable Amount of Time by Allen Pike writes about a magic trick that seemed nearly impossible but it worked because Penn had buried 52 cards in a park and waited months for grass to grow back over them,

“Teller [of Penn and Teller] describes the underlying principle like so:”

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”

In this case, the trick isn’t dextrous hands or a nimble mind but dedication and planning.

“It can be... [More]”