BANNED USER: temperamental dysregulation
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
Banned by: @Amadan
You will not grasp her with your mind
or cover with a common label,
for Russia is one of a kind —
believe in her, if you are able...
https://ruverses.com/fyodor-tyutchev/russia-cannot-be-known-by-the-mind/424/
Like many, I have overcorrected on Wagner's mutiny somewhat, though less so than e.g. Karlin who had found a new delightful opportunity for youthful wonder. At this point, the story looks boring and in line with what normal pro-Western analysts are saying, e.g. here or here (I don't follow the war very closely though, there surely are better sources).
For a while now, MoD has been in the process of first diminishing and then dismantling Wagner as an autonomous force (for understandable reasons that all functional states have figured out by, like, Renaissance). Prig is, well, a warlord whose relevance overwhelmingly rides on controlling a private army, so he was understandably opposed to it, justifying his opposition with (arguably, maybe, true) arguments about relative performance and the great common task of fighting the accursed hohol. His contempt for Shoigu was perhaps a little affected to resonate with the common man (and indeed, even pro-regime voenkors shitting on Wagner now can't bring themselves to say that Shoigu&Gerasimov have legitimacy, they'll just get clown-emojid to hell and back – incidentally, as of now there's 420K clown reacts under Prigozhin's declaration of turning back). His goals were ensuring his survival at a minimum, and his unchallenged control over Wagner at the maximum.
I believe we don't yet know how this will shake out. The default outcome, corroborated by the renewal of treason case against Prig, is that Putin+Luka have prevailed and shooed everyone into apparent compromise, which just means postponed execution for Prig and likely his inner circle. Maybe not – the murky current status of Wagnerites suggests there's uncertainty remaining. It was close anyway. Prig has failed in securing his maximalist terms (removal of MoD heads who directly threaten him) but has successfully demonstrated that their worthlessness is a Schelling point and the army's integrity is hanging by a thread. It's just a thicker thread than he hoped. Maybe it's thin enough for Putin to fear touching him again.
My prediction is 60% Wagner dissolving and Prigozhin being eliminated in some manner (maybe not killed but actually convicted, maybe he offs himself), 25% Prigozhin, Utkin etc. somehow weaseling out of it, brokering some deal with Luka and either just chilling in Belarus, «going missing», or escaping to… Africa?, and 15% «anything goes», because Russia is, after all, a magical place.
P.S. Lukashenko has always had more agency and character than Putin, this only changed somewhat after Russian aid in suppression of Belarus protests and EU issuing Luka a black mark; as you can see, he owes Putin his very survival, yet cannot be forced into substantially committing to the war. For years, he was propping up his quasi-Soviet economy with Russian subsidies and markets. Hell, he's the nominal supreme commander of the Union State, He's a tough and crafty man (also much taller, and Putin straight up fears tall people), a real self-made dictator who uses Russia/Putin for his convenience and ponders incurred obligations at his leisure. But the same is true for Kadyrov, Tokayev (also rescued by Russia, also lukewarm), probably even Shoigu – literally anyone with their own army and power base.
Putin's image of a strongman is as fraudulent and laughable as his mafia empire's image of some based Orthodox Christian Bear. He's our curse, nothing more. A murderous curse, but not particularly politically savvy.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
A true loyal nobody is someone like Vaino, a terrified worm who owes Putin his everything (not much) in life. Shoigu is, indeed, closer to the generation that had made Putin, he has an aggressive cult of personalty and clearly was being groomed into a possible successor at some point, possesses an ethnic stronghold in Tyva (which, incidentally, had been sovereign until 1944, and iirc has elite continuity from pre-Soviet era – in a sense, it's more ripe for secession than Caucasus or, certainly, Tatarstan meme), a private army (Patriot) on top of control over the regular army and, indirectly, МЧС, and fails upwards with zero reproach for thirty years now. I'm not sure there's anything to the «shizoid Kremlinology», but he does look like a genuinely powerful figure, with his obsequiousness not much more indicative of his essence than Kadyrov's exaggerated insistence that he's «Putin's infantryman» is the reason his people can harass federal center siloviki when they feel like it.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Putin keeps bumbling along and attempts to replace Shoigu with an even more incompetent and unpopular yes man, but he proves unable to control the Russian army.
I love devarbol Shoigu-posting.
Putin: pathetic, afraid, hides in a bunker, an international war criminal
Shoigu: chills in the palace in Tuva, does woodworking, afraid of nothing, even of the goblin-looking guy with a person army who promises to kill him, hasn't done anything wrong
People have a lot of discourse about "Putin will remove/will not remove Shoigu" and reasons for it but why do they assume that Putin can remove Shoigu in the first place?
There is a schizoid Kremlinology point that Shoigu can be actually more powerful than Putin (at least he is politically older for sure) and hence all the current stuff.
The role of Shoigu in the political system of Russia is far weirder and more important than you normally get from any news about him (just this incompetent clownish guy), but he is one of the few people who took Yeltsin into the government and is still in power, for example.
The official theory is that Shoigu is the reincarnation/avatar of this person, they talk about it in his personal museum in Tuva.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Ah, yes, I missed that.
It's more than irksome. Communism inherently sells itself as the vision of the future, only ever an experiment at attaining perfection (even though I agree with Shafarevich that it's a millenia-old failure mode, a sort of naturally occurring cancer, equipped with the evergreen pretense at having noticed the skulls); reactionaries are, well, drawn to tradition. Russia the third Rome, Russia the eternal based no-nonsense Czardom, Russia the bulwark against degeneracy, the shard of the right-thinking world that had been, a living link. Was silly in Nietzsche's time, vastly sillier now.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
This is so incredibly feeble. A shard of smug reddit rhetoric.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
You are missing the point of Galeev's parable, I'm afraid. Far right dissidents are not representatives of their states, nor do they recognize the legitimacy of incumbent representatives. Of course the specific project of European identitarianism (or local populism) was still doomed, but the idea of shaping conditions for sovereignty via alliances of convenience with repulsive outsiders is well-supported by historical track record in the Old World. Indeed it's not even reputationally costly – you can fight for communist tyranny and then become heroes to some of the most anti-communist people on the continent, to have wistful songs composed in your honor. (Or you could fight for Nazis, so long as you have some cute songs to the effect that Fuhrer sucks). How does that work? A Russian pig dog slave won't understand, this is very subtle stuff. Freedom is best, and hard choices, after all. Unironically.
If anything, DRs are unusual in their tendency to justify their allies and sponsors ideologically as well, and to sincerely buy and propagate those excuses; it took the war to snap them out of it – incompletely, at that.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
It's concern-trolling to say that if right-wingers actually believed in the gravity of demographic change then they would become traitors for no strategically beneficial reason
Well that depends on the object level. For the longest time, Putin's structures actually provided some morsels of support to the European far right. So I'd say it did seem like they had a strategic reason to stan him.
The Right wing should not turn traitor for no reason, they should say "Evropa!"
They sure can try to own this trend.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:
«What does this have to do with Lenin?»
Nowadays, John Locke is considered to be the founder of English liberalism. But Locke became widely popular only in the 19th century; in the 17th-18th he was scarcely read or quoted. Algernon Sidney was the ruler of minds at that time – it was his ideas, for example, from which the founding fathers of the United States drew. Sidney was an active participant in the English Revolution and a staunch Republican, so after the establishment of Cromwell's dictatorship he resigned from all posts. After the Stuart restoration he went to the continent, first to the Netherlands, then to France, unsuccessfully trying to organize a mutiny against the king. After an amnesty he returned to England, where he was arrested for treason. Two witnesses were required for a conviction for treason, but the authorities found only one. Then Lord Jeffreys did a feint and brought in Sidney's own book, Discourses on the government, as a second witness. The fact that the book had not even been printed and was kept in Sidney's desk failed to deter the judges and they sentenced him to execution. So Sidney became the chief martyr of the Whig movement and an icon of English liberalism and republicanism.
Much later, documents were published proving that the tyrannicidal Sidney lived on the money of the main tyrant of Europe and the enemy of England, Louis XIV, and sought money from him to organize a rebellion. The only thing they did not agree on was the price – Sidney wanted one hundred thousand ecus, but the king agreed to give only five times less.
This publication caused a furor. One of Sidney's friends said he could not have been more ashamed if he had seen his son fleeing the battlefield with his own eyes. The liberal historian Macaulay wrote that few things hurt him as much as seeing Sidney's name on Louis XIV's list of pensioners.
However, let's look at the situation from the other side. Suppose you are a revolutionary and want to overthrow the regime. How exactly are you going to do it? By crushing it with authority? You basically have no choice but to turn to other regimes that are enemies of yours. Simply because loners don't solve anything in this world, only corporations do. Meanwhile, in the second half of the 17th century it was the states that became the strongest corporations on Earth, and in the second half of the 18th century they subjugated or destroyed all their rivals. So it turns out that opposing one state you are forced to turn to others for support, with no options.
So the moronic lamentations about Lenin and the money of the German General Staff just don't make any sense. Of course Lenin would have taken money from the devil, the alternative would have been to sit in Switzerland and smear snot on his face for the rest of his life.
This, like a great deal of Galeev's old writing, says more about his own life strategy than about history. Nevertheless, his facts seem correct. And Lenin, after all, succeeded.
Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".
You appeal to principle, but that's a principle of peacetime, not of genocide time. Would you have given the same counsel to, ah, Ukrainian soldiers siding with unironic Nazis? Or anti-Chinese Uighurs receiving support from hardcore Muslim movements? No, «the arrow doesn't turn», «this is different»? (Of course I won't say «siding with the US» because that's axiomatically righteous).
Let's not pretend that this is about anything other than objective incompetence and subjective lack of merit of the ideology. Right-wingers (more to the point, nationalists of any stripe sans the most shallowly «civic») are thoroughly routed in the West, same as in Russia incidentally. Russian rump looks to Ukrainian Nazis for guidance, Western one seeks salvation in Baste Putin. It's desperation tactics. Both right-wing camps understand their situation as genocide, slow or rapid, open or concealed. The same way Galeev understood the condition of Tatars before going to Washington DC.
Many camps assert to be driven by fear of genocide. It's the absence of attempts to unscrupulously find external sponsors that gives the lie to all the hand-wringing.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
I'd go full on Elon. It'd be better and I'd liked it more if Zuck won, but the size and weight difference is too much.
Of course, I assume that if it happens at all, Elon will have ≥2 months to prepare with professional trainers, and optimize his tactics against a Zuck-like opponent so it won't just be him overconfidently trying to pull off The Walrus.
By the way, would that be the most-watched fight ever? I think this is very likely. Most-watched individual sport event, perhaps?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Why do you assume that MoD is in any position to fight? That soldiers will shoot at all?
I think the mutiny will fail, but mostly for boring logistical reasons and because their actual targets are guarded by the FSO, as again Galeev notes (that said, the role of FSO is obvious to anyone who's looked even once at the makeup of Russian internal forces). It's far from obvious that most of the regular army will even bother engaging them. Prig's reputation is far higher than anyone's in there, esprit de corps in the Russian army is non-existent (by design), and frankly they would rather pass the buck to the next regiment. The whole army is dysfunctional, no matter what Twitter guys say about offensive, counteroffensive or whatever.
We'll see if he's negotiated this with Kadyrov soon.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Putin's death will no doubt be one of the few things that make me truly happy. Nevertheless, I still have some family in Moscow, and it becoming a battlefield or, hypothetically, coming under Wagner military rule (can you imagine how it goes given Prig's priorities and background?) will be quite horrible (not to mention I would rather not see the city itself harmed, much as that'd entertain Ukrainians and NAFO dogs).
Coup-like events in Russia are associated with the death of Paul I, who got hit in the head with snuffbox and succeeded by his son Alexander I. Now I wouldn't like the regime to just go on and Putin to be succeeded by… Dyomin, I guess? But there is no way this shitshow kills him anywhere so cleanly.
My preferred fantasy scenario is not worth discussing at this point.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Civil war in the middle of a (self-inflicted) world war is not exactly new for Russia.
There's nothing complicated about it, Kremlinology in Karlin's manner is obsolete. The regime is absolutely dysfunctional, flailing about with room temperature IQ reactions, there are no longer any Mnogokhodovochkas and Maskirovkas, and Prigozhin is straightforwardly a warlord (with vague Imperial sympathies) who's trying to avoid getting deep-fried like early LDNR leaders who were deemed a threat by Kremlin. This kill-your-military-heroes pattern is a staple of the Russian state and its dickless-but-psychopathic apparatchik leadership over the last century, so he has no way out but up. It very likely won't work, but it very likely heralds the final episode of our very special military operation: you can't very well fight the Ukrainian counteroffensive at the same time as you eliminate your most infamous and highest-morale military company by far.
Like a hour ago I paused the rewatch of Wings of Honneamise to see Russian state TV announce live the charging of Prigozhin with armed insurgency attempt (вооружённый мятеж), yada yada mercs don't support him in this urgent moment of our struggle against pro-fascist Ukrainians. Minutes later Prig said his forces are entering Rostov. There are some noises from the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow; probably nothing. Putin has congratulated Russians with the Day of Youth or whatever it's called. Russia, unlike Prigozhin, doesn't have any way out of this.
The details of the forthcoming decay can feed morbid curiosity of idle observers but don't matter more than, e.g., LeCun-Bengio debate on AI safety the other day so I won't follow it too closely.
As an aside, I cannot express in words my sheer contempt for everyone who's been denying the utter degeneracy of Russian power structure over the last 1.5 years, especially for people who accused me of «defeatism» and «selling out» and stanned muh based Putin The Savior of White Race from (I presume) the comfort and safety of their Western McMansions. You folks deserve whatever the GAE has in store for you.
One problem with long-running psyops (a topic far less studied and funded than astrobiology, which should inform our priors about dragons lurking in each domain) that I hypothesize is pervasive is they come equipped with mechanisms for manufacturing plausible deniability of the deliberate effort/plausibility of the core hypothesis; and signaling cascades for maintaining epistemic culture that produces the conclusion of enduring plausibility; and social contagion patterns that replace conspirators with useful idiots predisposed to trust that kind of psyop; and become a robust alternative truth. At that stage, it's all but impossible for a critical number of people invested in the psyop to snap out of it and say «this is all some bullshit» upon realizing how little object-level plausibility remains in the system.
After that, the mature psyop's decay is probably governed by equations for very slow dissipative or evaporative processes. It can fade away like a fad if it had never reached certain scale of membership and recruiting and insulating infrastructure to keep up peer pressure; or last near-indefinitely, like a religion. But it will never be deboonked. Not even the High Mega-Pope of the True Church, adorned with every esoteric and exoteric and secular regalia, will be able to come out and convince the faithful they've been led on; they will simply conclude he's been replaced by a skin-suited lizard.
Or alternatively, as Michael Vassar (was surprised to learn he's still around) puts it: «Once you know that taboos prevent the dominant narrative from converging on truth, logical inferences from the dominant narrative to very surprising conclusions should be seen as being of limited relevance». This is his hobby horse (understandable as the «mainstream consensus» with its taboos is so hugely consequential), but in realistically diverse societies it applies to recessive narratives just as well.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Agentina at this point has a terminal case of populism, from what I understand. This plus central bank being subservient to the whims of the state, plus simple export-driven economy where diverting labor from agriculture to industry eliminates surpluses, plus human capital flight… Really a proof for why independent CB is valuable. And low time preference is indispensable.
On the other hand, a good use case for crypto.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
HBD – in and of itself – does not provide reason to hate any group or individual, it's not a normative position but a prism for making predictions.
Smarter people, so far as they are unaligned with one's values, are a bigger cause for concern than dumber ones in all important cases.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
This does not follow. And, in fact, this kind of non sequitur coming from an apparently intelligent person is in itself a major reason. I think Lior Pachter's inane and poisonous hit piece on James Watson, a piece completely misrepresenting Pachter's own field for the sake of essentially propagating anti-white hatred while character-assassinating one of the field's heroes, was a big one. Really showed me how this happens.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Incidentally I've been trying to practice the virtue of brevity on Twitter. Perhaps @RandomRanger will soon come to like local longform more.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
It sure is nice to search for your keys under the street light, too, but it doesn't mean they are to be found there.
What's your favourite German movie?
What postwar German movie is comparable to, say, Amelie, The City of Lost Children, Léon, The Fifth Element – just off the top of my head?
Exactly like I've said: a hive goes through the motions, with nothing to show for it.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Huh? I'm pretty sure people use mobile apps for interacting with reddit. I certainly use Infinity (free app from F-Droid), orders of magnitude more people use Apollo. It's not a very convenient way to write effortposts, to be clear, but for many TheMotte was one subreddit among others, albeit a prominent one, checked out for new interesting content just as you scroll through more niche or entertaining stuff. It was the main, but not the only dish in my reddit consumption and I suspect this explains a lot in terms of our declined numbers.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Modern Germans produce things of meaning and beauty at a perfectly normal rate; I challenge you to prove me wrong.
Challenge rejected on grounds of its absurdity and lack of substance. What exactly do you mean they produce?
https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/3d4khn/deutsch_kommt_mir_so_vor_wie_eine_tote_sprache/
“Versteht Ihr mindestens ein bißchen davon, was ich meine?”
Probably not.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
What about it? This is sophistry. Argentinians don't move to South Africa either, and Ukrainians are uninterested in both; even a laughably poor Ukrainian, if in a position to choose, would consider to the tune of 60-80 other destinations before looking at SA.
Most people assign non-zero value to remaining in their home country; leaving aside obvious issues like refugees and job offers, they prefer to «move up» to a categorically higher-status one – and/or one that is culturally close. For Argentinians, Spain and Italy; for South Africans, the Anglosphere; for Ukrainians, Canada and Poland, though they aren't very picky at the moment.
A more serious question would be something like: where would a random third party, say a Thai (knowing no respective national languages, etc.) prefer to move, if forced to choose between those three options and well-informed. It's quite abstract, of course, a Thai would still try to move up.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Or perhaps GDP is not a very good measure of civilizational worth. Though Argentina is acknowledged to be the exception.
What about literally every other metric, from murder rates to life expectancy to, I dunno, the condition of public parks? I suspect South Africa will be far behind Argentina.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Seriously?
I admit it's a bit of an exaggeration. But even Requiem could drop some parts of liturgy.
(to be clear, I didn't mean monsters in the moral sense, that'd be incoherent. I meant actual dragons/sea beasts/other supernatural creatures that are portrayed as default targets of human hatred in the setting where they are present).
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3yr ago
Similarly to @BurdensomeCount , I couldn't care less about Tolkien's racial canon. It's the same thing as always happens, too. Sure, it's funny how we used to do blackface for historical accuracy – and now fantasy peoples, some outright inhuman and extraterrestial or extradimensional, ought to possess diverse ethnic identity signifiers of the population of United states. It might also break immersion for fans who are serious about history and deep lore of fantasy settings; I can respect their plight… to roughly the same extent as I respect artists annoyed by the deluge of AI-generated kitsch. Literally First World Problems. Tiny violin. Etc.
But. You know, little things like that do more than break immersion in a specific media piece. They break the whole illusion, jerk me awake. They redpill me (speaking of which: Wachowskis may believe they were making Gnostic allusions to the trans condition, but of course it's the other way around, they came within an inch of understanding Gnosticism through their sexual turmoil).
These little things remind me that I am an adult, a boring mature specimen of a murderous ape in the world of murderous, lying, boring and terribly clever apes, and not a neotenic Eloi in some enchanted Consumerland beholding le epic stories of adventure. Little things together form a pattern, the conspicuous and unalterable watermark of tropes that The Greater American Empire leaves on assimilated «IPs» and «franchises», on myths forging souls of those eternal children in the Pure Land of the West and beyond. Those tropes teach you to complete sentences.
Ultimate, irredeemable scumbags and punching bags are… white men.
All happy families or relationships are… either colored or mixed-race.
The one good white father figure, if he exists… dies a martyr, willingly, to make way for hot-blooded folx of color, often his adopted children ushering in a new era. He is not to have any white heirs of his own, certainly not decent male ones (it's okay to leave a daughter though).
The colored girl is… brilliant and self-assured, sassy yet competent.
The monsters are… gentle victims of exploitation and harassment (by elite whites).
And a bunch of other similar edifying pieces on what a Decent Person ought to expect, diligently repeated.
(Yes, I've watched Black Adam and a few Foundation episodes. Big mistake. Alita also comes to mind. And The Good Place. And even that Puss in Boots 2. I suppose the overhyped Spiderman is of the same mold, given his creator's stated beliefs).
You cannot escape. This pattern is to American movies (and games and cards and fan wikis and whatever) what the text of the Roman Missal is to Requiem by Mozart or Verdi or whoever else – the spirit and the essence, the Truth that is to be learned even as fanciful capeshit and fantasy plots change by the season. White and black, black and white, and then all colors of the extended Pride flag, the drill is spinning-spinning-spinning and it makes me sick for I cannot stop seeing the shape these colors carve into reality, even as low-effort rubbery CGI and glossy illustrations and clever game mechanics and inane bastardized narratives dance on its edges. When exposed to this absurd vision, I am not being entertained; I am being lectured through a tedious post-Hajnali quasi-religious morality play, and a sloppy one at that, boilerplate written by humorless Cathedralites who expect – for sound reasons – to elicit childish excitement with their mass-produced baubles sweetening the pill.
I'm either too old for this shit to be distracted by baubles or too wretched to appreciate the profundity of its moral lessons. But I'm just right for manga, somehow. Now as dozen years ago, I find chapter 88 of Medaka Box quite profound. More so now in fact, given that it talks of a similar disillusion I hadn't been keenly aware of back then.
They'll lobotomize the Japanese too, won't they? The process is well underway. In another dozen years, odds are we'll have all the creative means we could imagine, and nary a creator. Only sermonists.
Russians in general are artistic. Putin, too, loves LARPing as this meticulous micromanager with a good grasp on detail, this genuinely impresses older technical folks. Again, as devarbol said of Stalin, this doesn't necessarily translate into anything like understanding of the war, what is at stake, which details matter, whom to trust, when to act. In fact he's often very much behind the times; why, it seems that Wagner mutiny caught him by surprise, even though Prigozhin was making these noises for months. Putin is performing a particular role; he has imagemakers and various Turkic speechwriters (whose successors now feed him Twitter right-winger context about teh gays, it seems) and all that staff and it's probably pretty compelling – from afar, and when you don't remember decades of vacuous big picture pointification interspersed with occasional autistic detail and coyly wagging the finger at some guilty official, as the country rusts and rots and is pillaged by his friends and people trying to do anything productive give up and escape.
When you have that context in mind it looks pretty demonic.
More options
Context Copy link