Meanwhile, (in) famous Australian xitter activist Drew Pavlou calls billionaires to (cultural) battle.
I have at least 15 billionaires who follow me on X. This post is addressed to them.
Third Worldist Marxists and degrowth communists want to seize your shit and possibly murder you. Flying to Malaysia like @balajis doesn’t work because it’s the Third World and eventually they start accusing you of hiding Jews under your floorboards.
TL;DR: You big moneybags have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, do not waste your money on some farcical "charter cities" or "network states", spend them on activists like Drew.
The Red Cavalry is on the horizon, this is now or never!
We need more ... think tanks!
I am friends with a bunch of young Oxford and Cambridge educated right wing populist intellectuals in Australia, they want to start a think tank and help solve the human capital problem on the right, they would write policy papers and prepare the right to govern, but it’s impossible to get funding, and they all work conventional jobs where they would be fired immediately for saying anything political even on X
Centi-millionaire/billionaire activism driven by money alone had been debated here previously, and the record is not encouraging.
If the situation is really so dire as Drew believes, if fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance, if Mamdani is really new Lenin ready to set the Earth aflame, something more than policy papers is needed, but what?
Any better ideas and suggestions from Mottizen elite human capital? Not castle in the sky plans and fantasies, but something that humble billionaire can do alone or with few friends.
edit: links linked
Eetan
14d ago
too many taking the position that taking a lunch to work was living worse than a medieval peasant.
These people, of course, were overwhelmingly self identifying as left, with bios full of symbols of correct current year, month and day causes.
Black lives matter! Trans women are women! Free Palestine! Cooking your own food is ableist, Doordash is human right!
True trad Christian one, ofc, the atheist would want to do ..umm... nasty things to the roadkill, see the other current xitterstorm.
Usual example in "no god no morals, atheists owned!" eternal discourse is rape and murder, the xitter apologists recently upped the ante.
Eetan
15d ago
Malaysia is too strong of a state to start this kind of project in. You need a real basket case with limited central government, maybe somewhere like Haiti where you can just take over a few valleys and some coastline and chill
The problem is not any Haitian, even the most hardcore local gangs would have no chance against professional fighting force. The problem is international community, this means US+allies, who has rather zero tolerance for private filibustering.
There were such attempts in modern times, hadn't ended well.
Eetan
15d ago
People who are actually of extreme value to intelligence and centrally important to some kind of secret organization don’t get arrested
Assuming ZOG100% conspiracy theory where Israel owns and controls US completely, yes. Ofc, plain reading of history of US-Israeli relations debunks this. Many cases where US told Israel big no and threw wrench into their plans.
Assuming ZOG80, ZOG60, ZOG50 etc... it is rather plausible that Israeli operative, even high ranked one, gets into trouble with parts of USG who are not happy with Israeli influence, either in general or in this particular case.
Eetan
15d ago
I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.
Good luck with that. Your best option is to look among new immigrants, preferably from some Asian country, modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.
Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"
The age of bourgeoisie counting every penny is over, the age of aristocracy is back.
Eetan
16d ago
If you think that flipping and installing Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela (or installing and flipping, although it looks increasingly like she flipped first) is a shining example of the new Trumpy way of war, it is an obvious thing to try. The main problem is the lack of an obvious route to get Ahmadinejad installed as leader.
The problem is that Venezuela is not Iran and Iran is not Venezuela.
Bolivarismo/Chavismo was never about anything more than gibs, there was not even patriotic pretense to make Venezuela great for the first time ever. When it turned out that no gibs will be coming any more, no one was willing to die for this great cause.
In Iran, there are tens of millions who believe in the Prophet, Ali, Hassan and Husayn, who remember Ashura and Revolution, and they really mean it.
Eetan
16d ago
Yea, the plan to get out the Cardinal failed, shame. It will count as good ending only if the blockbuster movie is Iranian made.
Anyway, if this whole affair turns out to be real, this will be probably the most high ranking defector/traitor in modern history.
Previous record holders were probably diplomat Arkady Shevchenko, secret policeman Ion Pacepa and old Chekist/NKVD man Genrikh Lyushkov.
Eetan
16d ago
New culture war news, from the secret squirrel cloak and dagger part of culture war.
And it is top tier blockbuster spy thriller tale. Tom Clancy might be dead, but his spirit is marching on.
Inside Israel’s Secret Operation to Cultivate Ahmadinejad
The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to an Israeli safe house in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.
Inside the Mossad Plot to Install Israel's Arch-enemy Ahmadinejad as Iran's Leader
A Haaretz investigation reveals how Mossad agents brought former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on board, the shock within Netanyahu's cabinet and the recruitment of collaborators inside Iran
True if big, but is it big enough? What is really going on?
1/ All true news, you can always trust NYT and Haaretz. No one can resist Mossad grooming, even old revolutionary and God fearing true Muslim like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. All resistance is futile.
2/ All fake news, designed both to enhance Mossad reputation and depress Iranian morale. If even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was traitor recruited by the Zionist entity, who can be trusted? All resistance is futile.
Any way, Israel looks strong, but far from all powerful.
Eetan
16d ago
Yes. It would be terrible to find ourselves in the position of trying to figure out how to live Christian lives by interpreting the Bible from this extremely-removed modern perspective.
Well, it depends what the Bible is.
Ancient book written by ancient Near Easterners for ancient Near Easterners, or inspired, incorrupt and infallible guide for all men of all times and places?
If the latter, then it should be indeed comprehensible for all human beings, applicable to any situation and should not require explanations and footnotes longer than the original text in cases where the original context obvious to all people in ancient culture changes meaning of story or parable rather drastically.
Eetan
19d ago
The point is to show you are doing something and standing strongly against whatever is the villain of the day, the rewards are various, ranging from promotion and pay raise to clicks and retweets.
You do not need wait for internet age, actual censorship of physical books was long string of defeats since the invention of printing press.
Tsarist Russia, was know for the most extensive censorship in the world back in 19th century.
When he was about thirteen, Lado Ketskhoveli took him to a little bookshop in Gori where he paid a five kopeck subscription and borrowed a book that was probably Darwin’s Origin of Species. Stalin read it all night, forgetting to sleep, until Keke [his mother] found him. ‘Time to go to bed,” she said. “Go to sleep — dawn is breaking.” “I loved the book so much, Mummy, I couldn’t stop reading.” As his reading intensified, his piety wavered.
One day Soso [Stalin] and some friends, including Grisha Glurjidze, lay on the grass in town talking about the injustice of there being rich and poor when he amazed all of them by suddenly saying, “God’s not unjust, he doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived. If God existed, he’d have made the world more just.” “Soso, how can you say such things?” exclaimed Grisha. “I’ll lend you a book and you’ll see.” He presented Glurjidze with a copy of Darwin.
Another culture wars item of the week, this time involving culture, and this means culturally cultured culture. Books, luxury bookstores and fine wine, what's not to like?
World famous superstar Dua Lipa decided to do something about rising tide of censorship.
What? Open a library of banned books.
The doors are open to the Manifesto Library
To celebrate its inauguration, we gathered inside one of Europe’s most storied bookshops for a very special Book Tasting, exploring four titles from the collection, each representing one of its core themes:
Nineteen Eighty-Four (Power)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Control)
My Pen Is The Wing Of A Bird (Voice)
Patriot (Memory)
Accompanied by thoughtfully paired Portuguese wines from @sogrape, the evening opened up conversations around censorship, resistance and the importance of preserving voices that challenge power and refuse to be silenced.
Full list of the books is in the Cosmopolitan article, it is exactly what you would already expect.
Actually banned books in UK and EU banned as "serious prison time for production, distribution and possession" are not on the shelves, for obvious reasons.
Yea, it is about performance, about sticking it up to fictional MAGA villain, not about reading. Neither Dua Lipa not any of the prestigious guests are not going to read these books (and neither any other), not that there is something wrong with it.
Just another notch on the list of centi millionaire celebrities doing nothing with their wealth and influence except to climb up the ranks to hopefully ascend from paltry nine figure wealth to glorious ten and finally make it.
Another reminder that no god, no tsar, no hero and certainly no millionaire is there to save you. You must save yourself by your own hand, aided by huge spare disk space.
Addendum: so what can be done to thwart the censorship of banned books? There are already efforts to make information free on the internets, too numerous to count, just pay their bills, support and amplify them. Just about any book ever digitized is out there at the click of your fingertips.
What about books that were not digitized? Cryptocurrency solves it - establish forum/website where you can put up bounty for ultra obscure book you are looking for, payable at successful upload of usable scan at free book pirate site. Something like this, only with stronger incentives than reddit upvotes. (it had probably had been done somewhere, the hypothetical millionaire has to make the effort more visible).
Eetan
19d ago
What is the US military supposed to do? More bombing?
Iran is, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, developed industrial country.
World #12 in electricity production
World #18 in motor vehicle production
etc, etc...
Serious war against Iran would entail dusting out WW2 playbook and go for full strategic campaign - blockade of the country plus destruction of industrial base. Unlike WW2 times, precision bombing means not "hit the tight quarter of the right city" but "hit the right pane of the right window of the right building" and industrial plants are not something that can be hidden.
But it will still mean multi year prolonged campaign, and it would mean 6-7 figure of Iranians dying, unlike in WW2 times streamed online, and this would not be seen by the world as spreading freedom, democracy and human rights.
Eetan
19d ago
The social contract used to be that after your parents took care of you when you grew up, you would take care of them in their old age.
The social contract used to be that in the improbable case that your parents live into so decrepit old age when they are unable to work any more, they will spend at most few months in such state until they are carried away by some respiratory illness.
Eetan
19d ago
What exactly is this worthy cause? Consolidating control of the sandbox? Greater Israel? Something else?
Yes, at least according to large part of USG decision makers, the Holy Land is what is it all about. Something hard to really grok for aspiring rationalist types, but this is really the best explanation for this mess.
If it was really all about oil, you would not see even one tenth of part of IRL Middle Eastern drama - US would just do business with anyone willing to pump and sell the black goo. See, for example, Africa - Nigeria, Angola, Congo etc are as riven with intractable conflicts, but The Free World(TM) is not tempted to intervene.
See recently deceased Lindsey Graham as typical example
There is no one to say Kaddish for Lindsey Graham. He had no wife. He had no children. He dedicated his entire life, mostly for us. We are his children.
Lindsey loved the Jews more than the Jews loved themselves. He traveled the world, from country to country, and fought like a lion for the State of Israel. He wasn't even Jewish himself. He simply believed with all his heart, with all his might, that it was the right thing to do.
The culture war angle is two-fold: First, it seems weird that people go so hard on clavicular when stuff like this is accepted (at least by the online left).
Easy to understand - F1nn let his face be remodeled by professionals, the best and the brightest experts, while Clavicular performs the looksmaxing care on himself with hammer in his own hands.
The same reason why suicide is discouraged, why stopping suicide and saving human life is one of main pretexts of rising internet censorship and gun control, while simultaneously Canadian care is spreading around the world.
Your face, your skull and your life do not belong to you, they belong to the experts. Trust the science, trust the experts, only they can decide, not dumb muggle like you.
Equivalent to Clavicular style looksmaxing in woke world is DIY gender affirming care, ranging from injecting yourself with various bathtub made substances to fully self performed gender affirming surgery.
But this is problematic.
This is not something praised and encouraged by mainstream left online and offline, this is domain of real hardcore underground very very far from public acceptance.
edit: links linked
Eetan
21d ago
He got a literal golden casket, but nobody actually looks up to Floyd in any way, nor did any lasting social change occur in his name. BLM took the money and ran, people clamored back for the police once it was gone, and all that remains is a landmark of peak woke.
Nah, peak woke is this.
Far more inspiring than St. Floyd festivities and with universal worldwide appeal.
And it is still open whether it is really over, or if it will return after Trump with vengeance.
Eetan
21d ago
That's an interesting point. If being the Pope is like being the best at any other profession, he probably DOES question his identity as a Catholic a lot.
If the pope has only little grain of actual faith, he knows that nothing happens by accident (at least at such spiritual pinnacle of the world as Vatican), he knows that Pope is not picked by fallible sinful men, but Holy Spirit personally.
(sometimes as inspiration and reward, sometimes as warning and chastisement)
Eetan
22d ago
It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.
Not only random shitposters, but even the most serious esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist who at the time correctly disavowed all conspiracy theories and called it what it was, act of self radicalized lone wolf, predicted this event to be the turning point, end of debate.
America will not have a Years of Lead moment as the age of armed ideological cells is over. Contrary to popular opinion, organizations like Ordine Nuovo and Le Brigate Rosse were not wholly created by intelligence services but were ALLOWED to operate by intelligence services and/or political backers at the vertices of state power. It is the blind eye that facilitates groups like this, even more so in the age of mass surveillance. Kash Patel is not going to allow armed right-wing extremist groups to operate with impunity; nobody in the GOP is ballsy enough to allow an American NAR. Antifa is allowed to operate when the DNC is in power because Democrats ALLOW them to. Having Lumpenproletariat foot soldiers deployed to punish your enemies is rational. Killing Charlie Kirk while they are not even in power is not.
Instead, the age of American political violence will be lone gunmen blowing someone’s head off on camera every couple of weeks.
Well, 10 months after, even this did not happened, no copycats so far on any side.
There just aren't so many people willing to sacrifice their lives who are so functional they can track single even moderately protected target (instead of random indiscriminate massacre).
It all turned out to be one big nothingburger. Is current situation still far from revolutionary conditions, or modern culture of circus and spectacle just lacks the seriousness necessary to create martyrs?
Eetan
24d ago
Bourdain, who grappled with drug addiction and depression, kills himself at 61 during a bout of unrequited love.
One missing, but important piece for judging B according to content of his character: when he killed himself, he left behind his 11 years old daughter.
Sorry, but when you have children, your life is no longer your own, that's the point of the whole enterprise. If your "twu wuw" is more important to you than your kid, you are, in technical terms, piece of shit.
Eetan
24d ago
The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and the evidence points to a Stoic work
Or it might be Epicurean work after all - formal debate between Epicurean and Stoic, genre popular in ancient times.
Only small part from the inner layers of the scroll was recoverable, the outer parts are gone, worn down by 19th century experts who tried to unroll them by technology then available. Maybe this is the part where the Stoic thinker makes his case, and we will never see the Epicurean demolishing him by facts, logic, reason, science and power of friendship.
It is only the first scroll, several hundred to go. Keep your hopes up.
Eetan
25d ago
Well, if you are VIP owning such villa, and current emperor is aspiring writer, it would be strongly recommended to acquire his works and prominently display them in your library, regardless how you personally feel about their merits.
Assuming the Latin library was not evacuated in time, and is still there properly baked by the volcanic heat, chance to find Claudius' writing is rather high.
Eetan
25d ago
I suppose they might be useful for the history of philosophy, though I suspect that we are already indirectly aware of the philosophical hits of the era via citations in works that have come down to us. Would we benefit from having the full text of some lost work? I suspect not.
Survival of ancient philosophical works was not on the principle "the best of the best", but rather random chance, heavily weighted by Christian principles.
Plato, Aristotle and (some of) Stoics were found to be compatible with Bible, Epicureans absolutely not (not to speak about other schools of philosophy that had to exist, but were forgotten so completely that not even names and quotes remain).
It would be interesting to find out what lost ancient thinkers really were about, and even more interesting to find out whether their ideas were independently reinvented by modern thinkers who couldn't know about them.
Eetan
25d ago
Time for some positive culture news, free of gloom, doom and blackpill. Are there any?
Yes. The Vesuvius project to digitally decipher ancient scrolls from Herculaneum - discussed here previously - yielded first fruits.
First rather badly mangled scroll read.
It seems to be not Epicurean, as expected, but Stoic philosophical work.
PHerc. 1667 is what survives of a larger roll: earlier attempts to open it by hand — in the nineteenth century, and again in 1969 and the 1980s — destroyed its outer layers and left only the compact inner core, about 8 cm of an original height of 19–24 cm. From that surviving portion we have now recovered and read the text in full — the lower parts of some twenty-two columns, transcribed and reviewed by papyrologists. It is the first time the preserved text of a rolled Herculaneum scroll has been read continuously, end to end, rather than in isolated words or patches.
The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and the evidence points to a Stoic work: it turns on human nature, impulse, and the moral progress of human beings, and its final preserved column names Aristocreon — nephew and disciple of the great Stoic Chrysippus — which, together with the language and themes of the text, places it in a Stoic context and dates it to the 2nd century BC.
What it means? It means fears that the recovered heap of scrolls is remnant of purely Epicurean collection were overblown, that the library was general philosophical library and we can expect works of all ancient philosophical schools - those known whose works survives, those known only by name and those completely forgotten.
Remember, the villa - nothing fancy like Nero's house, just average dwelling of top 1% of top 1% of Roman Empire - was expected to contain just as basic barebone fixtures, among masterpieces of sculpture, painting and other arts, two complete libraries (one Greek, one Latin). There is chance that they are still there and were properly carbonized to withstand millenia.
(to excavate the whole site properly would mean to demolish modern town of Ercolano, but this is problem solvable by modern billionaire emptying his pockets for spare change)
Time for degenerate moderns to shut up and listen to the ancients.
Remember, mechanical arts might be nice, but are lacking something.
… being practical wisdom about that, is also about this. This [person? aspect?] that concerns the mechanical arts seems to me to be very distant from such a [conception?], and to have the technical fulfilment that is, so to speak, lame and something of such type lacking, and in regard to the …
Eetan
25d ago
I did my Mormon mission in the Czech Republic. The Czechs have been in a fierce competition with the Estonians for a few decades over who can be the most atheist country in the world. Estonia appears to have a slight edge in the competition. Estimates range from approximately 1/2 to about 2/3 of either country being atheists.
Having talked to an extremely high number of (ostensibly atheist) Czechs about religion, I learned something important: being nominally atheist often doesn't mean believing in strict adherence to rationalism, the scientific method, etc. as a source of knowledge. I'd estimate that the overwhelming majority of "atheist" Czechs believed in what could loosely be called "new age gibberish" or "woo".
Well, Czechia is not paradise on Earth, but according to most official statistical metrics and impressions of visitors and expats it is one of the best countries of the world. Including homicide and general crime rate.
This example alone rather disproves common religious argument that without faith there is no morality.
For example, here is local crime blotter - use autotranslator and see that most newsworthy habbenings from 10M country are traffic accidents and low rent scams and thefts. No deluge of grisly murders and gang violence, as you would expect from similar sized highly religious US state or city.
Driver ends up with car flipped on its side in Prague, passenger injured
He hit a cyclist on the sidewalk and drove away. A young driver in the Frýdek-Místek region breathed in alcohol, the man died
After crashing into a tree in the Vsetín region, he left the crew to die and fled. The driver faces up to sixteen years in prison
He claimed to be a doctor and an American soldier. A woman in love from South Bohemia lost a million
He broke into seven apartments and tried in vain to open four more. The man from Pilsen was caught by the police after weeks of searching.
Yes, the birth rate is low, but this is the case for all developed countries. Generally, it is unclear how would Czechs benefit from conversion to Mormonism and giving up alcohol, including beer.
She could do it, because there is already huge, decades old network of left wing charities and NGO's ready to be funded. Lots of the cash was snatched by the organizers for large mansions and other necessary expenses, but most of really went where it was supposed to go.
There is no such thing in right wing world (excluding mainstream and useless conservative institutions). All of potential right wing donor cash will be instanly appropriated by grifters and scammers.
The difference between supplying organized army that is fighting, vs just sending stuff to nowhere.
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