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]”

This is a long video. It’s a pretty good video, though. It’s quite soothing to listen to and there are really a lot of good movies in there, with lovingly curated clips of all of them. I like to watch these things to see if there’s something I can add to my movie list. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so everything that looked interesting to me … had also already been consumed by me. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The video has a pretty clickbait-y title, but the author is someone I’ve... [More]

The video/podcast Talking Trump, RFK Jr., Epistemic Collapse, &c. by Justin Smith-Ruiu & Olivia Ward-Jackson (Hinternet) was pretty good. I credit both participants but, if we’re honest, Justin talks about 95% of the time. It was quite an interesting discussion, touching on several salient points.

Misinformed about Trump

I’m still somewhat surprised to hear how empire-tinged some of the Justin’s information is, despite his conclusions being decidedly anti-empire. In particular, he completely mischaracterized Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney,... [More]

I know that people were absolutely horrible to large parts of the population based purely on identity in the United States in the 1950s. But can we also acknowledge that discussions like the half-hour interview of Erich Fromm by Mike Wallace actually happened on television?

This is a major socialist philosopher and psychologist talking to a non-adversarial journalist who actually read his book. These days, this kind of interview is relegated to a channel with subscribers in the triple digits... [More]

The video was posted 17 years ago, so it’s most likely from around that time. Rollins is in Israel. He spends the first ¾ of the segment discusses his visits with wounded, American veterans. He segues, at the end, to giving the Israeli audience a noble mission.

Ember of Rage by Henry Rollins (YouTube)

A good friend sent me this link recently, with the comment, “I don’t think they listened.” The video already had my thumbs-up on it, but I can’t remember when I’d already watched it.

Yeah, I don’t think they listened. They weren’t... [More]

This is a wide-ranging one-hour interview with Cornel West. West seems a bit more frazzled than he usually is, but he still provided some reasonably pithy commentary. It would have perhaps been better if Chris had spoken more.

Dismantling the American Empire (w/ Cornel West) | The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges (YouTube)

At 20:45,

“That’s a sign of what it means to be obsessed with success out of careerism, opportunism. And it reflects the distinctive and dominant features of the political and professional class in the American Empire, which is conformity, complacency, and... [More]”

The following Slavoj Žižek video is only one minute long. In it, he explains that we need another system simply because the one we have is so utterly inadequate to the tasks before it.

…on why he is a communist, but not a socialist by Slavoj Žižek (YouTube)

“I remain a communist. In what sense? My good friend told me he was there, as part of some delegation, two days after Fukushima. He told me that, for a couple of hours, the Japanese government was in total panic. It looked that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area: 30 million people. Then, maybe,... [More]”

After several years of being virus-free, I’ve been sick several times in the last eight months. I was telling a friend that I was sick of being sick and he told me that’s how your body gets stronger; it builds up immunity by being sick. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps we are incapable of mastering these unseen enemies. But I can’t help feeling that this is a capitulatory attitude, the attitude of someone stuck in the Dark Ages, a time when people had no hope of beating disease. We used to be... [More]

Deepfakes are fake. It’s right in the name. So why are we getting our panties in a bunch about them?

The article There’s Probably Nothing We Can Do About This Awful Deepfake Porn Problem by Freddie deBoer (Substack) was surprisingly superficial. It deals only with the question of whether we should do a “war on drugs” style campaign against deep fakes—a hopeless and utterly ineffective crusade that causes misery for the innocent and pours money into the coffers of the usual suspects—or whether it’s completely hopeless... [More]

I really hope that, if we continue to apply pressure to get what we want, that it will bear fruit. Although it’s easier to retreat into the reassuring hopelessness of cynicism, I do wonder whether something might be categorically different this time. The rulers have lost control of the narrative, at least to some degree. They’re making a lot of unforced errors that they haven’t made before. Consider the stink of desperation in the coverage of the Olympics—we are a powerful sports... [More]

There is a form of protest where people glue themselves to roads and block traffic. If you’re serious at all about building a movement or awareness—i.e., you’re trying to enact positive change—you must consider the effects of your tactics. What will they make people think about your cause? What is the likelihood that you’ll get them on board?

Are your tactics likely to work? Will they perhaps backfire in the near-term, but have positive long-term effect? When you protest, what is the... [More]

The Tumbler repost The modern digital divide (Reddit) is about how well younger students really understand their digital devices and apps. This is an interesting story told by a high-school tutor about digital-tool abilities in the current generation of kids. It’s a bit long, but I thought the following conclusions were interesting.

The Internet vs. Apps

It contrasts using the Internet with using apps, which are not at all the same thing.

The Internet is an open place with links and content, accessed... [More]

I really liked a recent interview with Samuel Moyn by Doug Henwood in 04.01.2024 (Behind the News), so when I saw his name again, I figured It’d check out the video below. It was reasonably interesting, but not really worth noting, except that I noticed that it exhibited some core fallacies evident in the so-called liberal project.

'What Happened to Liberalism?' Samuel Moyn in conversation with Becca Rothfeld by The Philosopher (YouTube)

At 34:00, Becca Rothfeld says “Biden is pretty leftist in some ways.” In which ways? I’m honestly interested to know because I can’t think of anything that wasn’t just something he said once or twice, or things... [More]

In the podcast Episode 345: Naughty List (Patreon), Brace and Liz called Kevin Spacey a “child rapist”, then an “alleged child rapist” and finally settled on “ex-alleged child rapist”. Just using the epithet “child rapist” suggests that Spacey preyed on very young children, when the only accusations that actually went to trial were from someone who claimed that they’d been assaulted when they were 14 years old.

That would have been awful (had it happened), but it’s somehow less awful than if they’d been 5... [More]

The article I Think You Should Be Kind by Freddie deBoer (Substack) is the first of two about genders and biology and stuff. I read with interest and took some notes. The follow-up is linked in the second half.

“Almost all vertebrate animals exhibit some sort of sexual dimorphism, and saying so does not in any way undermine the case for trans rights. The whole argument is that physiology does not dictate gender, and acknowledging that most people with penises go through life uncomplicatedly accepting a masculine gender... [More]”

To think I almost shrunk away from the 150-minute runtime of this video! It was well-worth my time, felt like it went more quickly than the runtime, and was an all-around excellent conversation. I’ve included a partial transcription of the parts I found interesting and my own notes below.

Billionaire's Anti-Palestine ATTACK on Academic Freedom (w/ Norm Finkelstein) by Bad Faith (YouTube)

You can buy literally anything

At 27:00 they are talking about the recent ousting of president of Harvard Claudine Gay, largely through billionaire Bill Ackman’s efforts.

“Norman: I don’t recall a single... [More]”

I’d never heard of Peter Sloterdijk and, if I’m honest, I won’t jump on the next video starring him. He has a great voice, but I wasn’t too overwhelmed by his philosophical elan. Žižek, on the other hand, was his typical self, full of fire and tangents and interest connections.

He also told a few jokes: one was about about being in a gulag, where the food is terrible, but on Sundays, you get a special treat: a second plate! It’s kind of a riff on the old saw of “I have two complaints: the... [More]

I have a lot of questions about the rush to replacing human expertise with machine-based expertise.

The Expertise Pipeline

Do we still need expertise? If so, how do obtain it? What do we do when we saw off the branch we’re sitting on by getting rid of the first half of the pipeline that leads to the second half containing expertise?

The pipeline looks roughly like this right now:

1. Prime the pump with self-starters/geniuses
2. Add people who learn from those pioneers/initial experts
3. Those... [More]

The article Brickbat: Ideological Impurity by Charles Oliver (Reason) writes,

“According to a social worker’s report, the two were asked how they would feel if a child in their care was LGBT. The two responded that they would still love the child, wouldn’t kick the child out, and wouldn’t subject the child to conversion therapy. But both opposed sex change treatments for those under 18 and expressed a reluctance to use pronouns that don’t reflect someone’s biological sex, and Catherine said it would be important for the... [More]”

It’s pretty tedious to watch so many people trying as hard as they can to censor expression of which they don’t approve, all the while screaming at the top of their lungs that they are being censored by others. They see censorship of their own speech as beyond the pale because their opinions are correct whereas those they are trying to censor should of course not be able to speak out because they are promulgating hate speech.

It’s all so very tiresome. Good people end up fooling... [More]

The article The forbidden topics by Drew DeVault writes,

“Critics of radical free speech, victims of hate speech, and marginalized people of all kinds began to appear in hacker communities. The things they had to say were not comfortable.

“The free speech absolutists among the old guard, faced with this discomfort, developed a tendency to defend hate speech and demean speech that challenged them. They were not the target of the hate, so it did not make them personally uncomfortable, and defending it would... [More]”

The other night, some older guys walked by me in a train station. They were talking about drinking beer. They looked like they’d been doing just that. One of them joked to the other that he was also “looking at pretty girls“.[1] His friend replied “there are none along that way“.

Lots of laughs. Super funny.

There were young ladies in that mass of people walking away from the train. What did they think? Were they amused? I doubt it.

It’s not really funny. It’s actually kind of stupid.... [More]

I find myself increasingly at odds with this ever-more-popular notion that there are certain things you cannot say. Restricting freedom of expression is just a way of restricting freedom of thought. If you can’t express an idea, you can’t share it. If you can’t share it, you can’t inspire other people to think it.

When I moved to Switzerland decades ago, I remember being quite surprised to hear that it was technically illegal to deny the Jewish Holocaust in WWII. The discussions were not... [More]