Eetan
2d ago
Bro, what? What on earth does this mean?
OP still remembers the top bestseller of the noughties. Now it is mercifully forgotten, but it was really big thing in halcyon times of Dubya's administration.
Eetan
2d ago
True, "what is a woman?" is much more of a metaphysical question.
More like "common sense" and "basic sanity" question. To dispute whether girls do have dicks is by several magnitudes further "out there" than to dispute official narrative of single historical event.
Eetan
2d ago
You can write the beginning of an interesting story that deals with "Aragorn's Tax Policy" and the grimdark of a fantasy setting
Yes. The peasants of Gondor are revolting due to heavy taxes, and the protagonist, hard working King's tax collector, desperately tries to explain to these dumb rednecks that Sauron is real and is really coming with giant orc horde.
Eetan
4d ago
Back to this culture war topic: it is rather significant that there are no billionaire made and commissioned big budget movies. Cinema is art where you can spend unlimited sums of money, and for price of luxury yacht that will rust away in few years you can hire top Hollywood talent to create masterpiece that will last forever.
Not for profit, but just for fun, as aristocrats of old patronized great artists. Imagine billionaire who happens to be, as random example, 17th century boo and wants to see historically accurate Battle of White Mountain.
But, despite explosion of super wealth, no one is interested.
Is it because modern oligarchs are not valuing art for its own sake, and not interested to pour cash to enterprises that will never pay for themselves, or just lack of imagination?
Eetan
4d ago
Herodotus notably states that Ethiopia produces the most beautiful women in the world, and Herodotus is Right About Everything.
Yes, especially when he is retelling second/third/Xth hand tales he heard on his travels.
When H talks about things he saw personally, he is not always reliable. For example when he traveled from Egypt to Babylonia, H was passing through Land Between River and Sea, that was at the time inhabited, as everyone knows, by wise and noble Elves Hebrews worshipping Eru Iluvatar JHWH at Laurelin and Telperion trees beautiful golden Temple with two pillars Jachin and Boaz.
Meeting people who worship only one god would be at this time like seeing real dog headed people. And H is silent, H says absolutely nothing about these wonders. Damn this Greek hater, damn him to Tartarus.
Eetan
4d ago
No one is calling you to adopt thirld world ways.
The widespread colorism shows that despite all fears, it is brown skin that is doomed, not white one.
Once embryo gene editing becomes cheap enough to be embraced by Latino, African and Indian masses, everyone picks genes for white skin.
World of the future is beautiful White world from pole to pole, dream of William Luther Pierce will come true (not exactly as he expected, but he will still smile and be happy when he will watch it from Valhalla).
Eetan
5d ago
Congratulations to your big beautiful bubble shielding you from the global majority.
Prejudice due to skin color alone is normal in most of the world, especially in dark complexioned countries where no one heard about bell curves.
Search for "colorism" and be enlightened/horrified.
Eetan
6d ago
I want more conservative-morality, gritty media.
Conservative morality of Late Bronze/Early Iron Age? Why not, if you want to retvrn, retvrn all the way back!
Cultural war and cultural revolution continues, as it should.
Revolution has a beginning, but it has no end.
And the newest battle is the most ancient, Homer's - and Christopher Nolan’s - Odyssey.
Many are happy, many are unhappy, and among the latter is world's richest man, as expected.
Then, the next day, he changed his mind. Directors - and actors - are as obsolete as draft horses, Grok can do it all alone and cheaper.
If it happens, would it make a difference? Elite Mottizen human capital had been talking and daydreaming for a long time about potential of money to change the world. If only we were rich men!
The real life billionaire and centi millionaire activism is not encouraging but we can always dream how we will do it right!
edit: links
Eetan
6d ago
It’s over. C.S. Lewis has already depicted you as the wojak, and me as the Chad.
Well, C.S.Lewis can be considered one of preeminent big C Christian small c conservative voices. When CSL calls you bad guy, you need to shut up and listen if you want to consider yourself conservative in good standing.
And it was clear that Scrubb family was meant to be bad from the first page of the book, and it was clear to intended readers, people of early 1950's, why.
This world is now as nonexistent as Narnia, so fully understanding this would need some unpacking.
So why Srubbs bad? Scrubbs are unwieldy combination of all things unpopular at the time, and lots of things were unpopular.
It is not only nonconformism of Scrubb family and their standing out of the English crowd.
1/They are COMMUNISTS.
Scrubb junior "liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools."
What sorts of books are this? Every reader in the early 1950's would instantly imagine Soviet propaganda books depicting land of workers as paradise on earth. And communism in general and USSR in particular were not well appreciated at this time.
2/They are HEALTH NUTS, possibly NEW AGERS
They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of underclothes.
the windows were always open.
Remember, we are in 1950's when boozing was part of life and doctors on TV recommended Lucky Strikes. What the Scrubbs think, that they are better than experts? Are they unchristian followers of some oriental superstition?
3/They are penny pinching MISERS
In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds
Remember, we are in 1950's, time of war recovery and rising prosperity all over the Western world, even in England.
People had jobs and money for the first time in decades. Buy and consume was the order of the day. If you could (and Scrubbs are depicted as respectable educated people, not utterly destitute poor) you should buy buy buy, fill your house with stuff, then throw it away to make place for more stuff.
Not going with the plan painted you as some throwback, Scrooge like 19th century miser.
4/They are NERDS
Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card.
And not the useful sort of nerds, who are building computers, rockets and H-bombs to keep the commies at bay, but losers obssessed with useless stuff like beetles. Who needs it?
(MKULTRA research looking for new drugs and hallucinogens at all possible sources, including exotic insects and spiders, in order to fight for freedom and stand up to commies, was still strictly classified at the time).
Eetan
6d ago
And it's not even a factual disagreement, liberals usually just shrug at the prospect of any European-descended group being dissolved.
LIBERAL IRON MODE ON:
If European groups are "dissolving" it is due to their free choice, not genocide. There are no concentration camps and mass graves in Europe. If Latvian does not want to be Latvian any more, this is his right.
And we are all for free choice, aren't we? (except choice to be bigot and hater, freedom to end freedom is no freedom at all)
If you support freedom, you would protect man from being murdered, while also protecting his option to access Canadian style health care if in the future he decided he is tired of life.
Eetan
6d ago
To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else?
Easy to answer from liberal perspective, no doublethink needed.
LIBERAL IRON ZION MODE ON:
Ethnostate for Jews is tragic necessity in order to survive, not something desirable in itself. Israeli situation is unique in the world. Immigrants in our countries are people who are fleeing mortal danger and desperate conditions, and by their hard work make economy stronger and life better. Do you want the line to go up, don't you?
Palestinians are not like that, Palestinians are hardened blood drenched terrorists, all of them are taught to hate and kill since the earliest age. Palestinians do not want peace, they want to blow up themselves and cut off heads (while your new Latino neighbor dreams about cutting your lawn).
The State Department released a report on the ties between radical leftism and Cuba
Not news. Cuba is total shithole in just about any relevant metric, excepting secret squirrel stuff.
Among professionals, Cuban secret services and intelligence operations are very highly prized and considered world class.
If/when US gets access to the archives, expect lots of surprises.
edit: typos, links
Eetan
8d ago
Last week anime culture war news was rather unwelcome here, so it is time for another.
The topic of last week xitter storm was anime.
Is anime weird? If so, what should parents do to make sure their kids never watch anime and become normal members of the crowd?
Fitting with the crowd as end in itself was always seen as moral duty in small c conservative tradition, nothing unusual with it.
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother", but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non- smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open.
It is clear who the bad people are and why they are bad.
Nevertheless, massive arguments for and against torn xitter asunder and joined with even bigger arguments whether normie existence in 2020's North America is really something you should strive for or whether much better, happier, nobler and more fulfilling life can be found elsewhere.
If you examine all parts of normie life, from such basics as school, regular employnment, transportation or house building and find this is worthwhile prize, and then find out that your kid is not normie, you should indeed tell them:
"For your whole life, you will live as undercover agent in enemy territory. As Otto von Stierlitz had to pass as Nazi, you must learn how to pass as normie."
(using Eastern archetype here, in Western culture heroes are men of action facing adversity directly and challenging enemy in honorable combat, not sus characters skulking in shadows)
But parents are usually extremely bad judges what is "weird" and what isn't. They remember what was normal and what wasn't in high school in early 1980's, and are unable to comprehend that times are changing. And this is the problem barely noticed, the problem that makes this whole discourse waste of time.
Eetan
10d ago
Could you shoot a mostly empty rocket over the horizon and claim it was a moon launch?
This will fool muggle masses, but the masses do not matter too much.
There is already conspiracy theory that all rocket launches are fake, and space travel
a/does not exist, because space is fake, you ain't getting through the firmament
b/happens on flying saucers powered by Nazi developed vril antigravity technology, thing so advanced it makes rockets look like dugout canoes
Obviously that wouldn’t get you the radar track, but could that get you the visual?
The problem with fake moon landing is that USSR, China and other powers would have to go with this charade. If moon landings are fake, whole cold war was fake, and this means totally fake, with both sides controlled by the same illuminati cabal. Few moon landing revisionists are willing to go so far.
Otherwise, US would for brief propaganda point give their rivals loaded gun pointed on their head.
Imagine USSR or China (or some other great power of the future) landing for real on the alleged Apollo spot, and announcing to the world that there is nothing out there - no flag, no moon buggy, no footprints, no bags of astronaut poo.
Eetan
10d ago
Is there anything I as an individual can do to push back against Flock cameras or broader mass surveillance in the US?
As individual, fully legally (we are all law abiding citizens here)?
The effective altruist way: if you have high paying job, grind extra hard and donate the money to some trustworthy and effective organization fighting for privacy rights (no idea if there are any).
The less effective but more altruist way: drop your job and other obligations and become full time agitator for the cause. In modern world, it means shitpost on the internets (so far, AI will soon replace these jobs).
Eetan
11d ago
But do not be too pesimistic, things are not completely hopeless. If you go to place remote enough and stay under the radar, if you concentrate purely on business side of things and eshew shiny flags and grandiose nation building projects, you can still in 21st century do things as if it was 19th century.
Wagner’s Remnants Are Running an Opioid Empire in the Center of Africa
After years of setbacks, the trade has given Wagner fresh impetus after its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash and much of its operations absorbed into the Russian state. Up to 500 of its members remain far up the Oubangui River in the Central African Republic, where their control over the tramadol trade is enabling them to exploit the country’s rich timber and gold resources. The Global Initiative estimates that Wagner earns $180 million a year from its illicit gold exports there. The trafficking of the painkiller to neighboring countries is providing an additional revenue stream.
Eetan
11d ago
In my time arguing on the internet, I've encountered a disturbing number of people who seem to think that having power over others is more desirable than any level of technological advancement. We have degrowth people IRL.
This is nothing exceptional, this is how baseline normie human works. If you see it as strange and unexpected, be grateful to gods/fates/fortune for beautiful bubble you live in.
Eetan
11d ago
I always wondered, do people think this is a fake story? Or is it just not a big deal?
Well, it happened 60 years ago, agonize over it now makes as much sense now as being still really angry about Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Eetan
12d ago
There is phenomenally popular conservative art, though.
And it is completely apolitical. No one listens to country music and thinks: "I must vote GOP harder, I must support the current day right wing cause!"
Eetan
12d ago
will fight to protect you if the feds come knocking
You probably mean this unrealistic xitter thread.
If the feds "come knocking" in serious way, they will arrest you when you are out of the city, or will send special forces team straight to your home in surprise raid at time when everyone is asleep.
Even if locals with their rifles are willing to open fire at feds, they can do absolutely nothing in either scenario.
Eetan
12d ago
Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People
It was the case as long as internet was open to general public, but the age of AI can finally put it to end. Machine can schizopost 24/7/365 without need to eat and sleep and easily outschizo the craziest crazies out there.
Eetan
12d ago
"You crowdfund the territory. The diplomatic recognition comes later."
No, it will not come. The last new country officially recognized by international community was ... guess ... South Sudan back in 2011.
All of world's powers in single day, 9 July 2011. See that South Sudanese independence was already fait accompli, decided beforehand.
This will not happen to some adventurer seizing some land in the middle of nowhere, the international community has zero tolerance for filibusters and freebooters. US+allies will treat such people like terrorists, and China the same, only harsher.
No one wants to give adventurous folks idea that you can just do thing, you can just leave your day job and become bandit in the swamp.
Eetan
12d ago
Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, Mackenzie, has launched 10 figures into charity in the last couple years, and it seems remarkably difficult to tell what that figure has actually accomplished in terms of yield and realworld impact.
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.
Professional beggars and scroungers do not feel their way of life as humiliating, they see themselves as smart and clever and see dumb mugs who believe their sob stories with the deepest contempt. Ofc, the professionals are in the game for more concrete gains than some football game points.
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