coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
The Terror, Chernobyl, Utopia (the UK channel 4 show from 2013), season 1 of Twin Peaks, Scrubs for its moralizing.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
The problem is that if we allow unknown provocateurs to “make topics annoying” by posting about them in the shittiest way, it gives anyone the power to veto the topic altogether. So, absent knowing the motivations of the shitty poster, it’s a better idea to just delete the posts and write them off completely. You would be amazed the lengths evil people go to ruin discourse. Back on Reddit there were people who would literally pretend to be a sockpuppet account of a different user in order to get that user banned, and other such shenanigans
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Unz goes through a litany of historians who (seemingly?) confirm the authenticity of the papers. Whereas the JTA link you posted reasserts the denial of the Polish ambassador who would have surely said the same thing no matter the veracity of the documents, as the documents were embarrassing to Poland’s relationship to the Allies. In any case I am also interested in your question.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
I’m a fan of summaries, bullet points, and bolded key conclusions
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Great insight! Didn’t know that about the Hebrew. I know there’s also a lot of punning in Jonah, too, which I imagine can only be enjoyed by knowing Hebrew.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
It’s a good book!
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Allegory in the Book of Jonah Part 2: Jonah 1:4-6
But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea, so that the ship thought to break apart. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they cast the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the recesses of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
The ship here is anthropomorphized, and having a personality it considered breaking apart. This unique choice is not incidental and betrays the spirit of the book, which is allegory. The word “wind” is the same as the word spirit, and this is no coincidence if we take wind to be a metaphor of the spirit of inner unrest. Jonah, we saw, was disobeying God, who is the great master of his soul and purpose (as to any believer). Jonah already broke apart with God when he stood by Jerusalem — the seat of religion — leaving his moral calling to Ninevah and spending his money on a trip to Tarshish.
The sailors, who were not Hebrews, all prayed to their gods for salvation. Its literal reading would be that they cast down the objects of the ship, to lighten the above (or upon) — and there’s ambiguity here to what is being referred. They may be lightening the “above” of the ship, or the “above” of themselves, but in either case we take it allegorically. There was a great inner unrest, and they were throwing out all the baggage that was weighing them down, in order to lighten that which is above. It’s of note that this occurs in the same breath as each one praying to his god, immediately after the ship considers breaking apart. In cases of violent unrest, when your ship threatens to break apart by a great and fearsome spirit, you throw out the baggage to unburden your “being above”, which is the very nature of “crying out to one’s god”.
In furtherance of this great metaphor, we read that Jonah had descended down into the recesses of the ship — or the most remote part — and laid down and fell asleep. The mariners were lightening what was above, and Jonah once again unwisely descended and absconded of any duty or moral impulse. How many times has Jonah descended now, anyway? He descended to board the ship, he descended to the remote part of the ship, then he lowered himself to fall asleep. And just like he determined to flee to the remote part of the region of his world (Tarshish), he went to the remote part of the ship.
The word “ship” in “recesses of the ship” is a hapax legomena which steps from the word “cover”. So rather than just descending to the remote part of the ship, there’s an element in which he descended under a cover, covering himself, so to speak. The failure of academics to read allegorically is why we have the poor translation here.
Now who goes to speak to Jonah? The Septuagint says “the look out man”, which fits neatly in relation to Jonah’s role both etymologically and as a prophet. “What do you mean, you sleeper” is a very quizzical question. It can be translated more literally as “what to you, sleeping?”, questioning both what sleeping’s purpose is for Jonah and even questioning the listener as to in what way we are sleeping symbolically. The look out man tells Jonah to arise (yet again!), and interestingly the word is “perhaps THE GOD will consider us”, in contradistinction to the the polytheistic god(s) in the previous sentence. It’s as if this mariner in a state of unrest required a singular mighty god.
A better translation is, “perhaps Elohîm will SHINE on us, so that we may not be lost”. It’s confusing how translators are so bad at their job. The word is shine because that’s the only previous use of the word in Hebrew, and because it is a request to cure the storm that Elohîm had cast down. Storm with clouds -> shining with sun. The word “lost” could plausibly also connote wandering, which makes sense for Jonah — our wandering prophet.
It is interesting now to note three ways this intersects with the Gospel. The first is when the Apostles were in a boat during a storm and Jesus was sleeping, and they go to awake him. He gets up to tell them to have faith and the storm quiets (and presumably he goes back to sleep). This is pretty funny. The second is this word sleeping, which in the Gospel connotes a spiritual torpor contrasted with wakefulness, something beautifully put to music by Bach. Third, we have this phrase arise — and it’s not by chance that Jesus tells those he heals to arise, lift their bedding, and walk.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
The quote is from the organization Friends of Efrat which is the org that Schumer among others is shown supporting
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
It’s in my OP reply but also here’s link, the text source is in the image of the article and also pasted in the article
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Is it too much for you to read my post? Read my post and click the link.
Israel is currently fighting a demographic war for her survival […] The Arab birthright is about double the Jewish birthrate. General Uzi Dayan speaking as the Director for the Council of National security announced: ‘Demographic projections forecast an Arab majority in Israel by the year 2020 less than 15 years from now.’
The group that catastrophizes Muslims having babies, which fear-mongers this fact in order to fund Jewish women having babies (the group is directed toward Jewish women exclusively), yet is pro choice on the national stage? Yes, I can say they probably support Muslims having abortion, but you’re free to disagree if you find a reason to.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Kaplan writing in the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies? This reeks of historical revisionism. Israel sterilizing Ethiopian women is a well-attested event in history.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-to-put-the-ethiopian-israeli-birth-control-controversy-to-rest
What these people are failing to note is that the source of the controversy is not one mistaken mischaracterization by one news source—the source of the controversy is the women themselves. As I wrote in January, many, many Ethiopian-Israeli women report being threatened or lied to about the Depo-Provera injections: “We didn’t want it,” one woman is quoted as saying in the February 28 article. “We refused and objected. We said we didn’t want to.” (More such comments can be seen here, here and here).
Thus, while accuracy is always important in reporting and Haaretz was right to issue the correction, what we really have here is a classic case of vulnerable citizens complaining of governmental abuse, their government denying that abuse, and a group of observers privileging the government’s version of events over that of the people complaining. It is precisely these kinds of stories that we pay journalists to cover; that’s why we call journalism the fourth estate.
It’s not surprising, but still abhorrent, that Israel would try to deny this atrocity.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
If there exist Jewish extremists who are primarily driven toward increasing their own bloodline and racial power, such that they support abortion for “goys” but desire births for Jews, that interest is at odds with the interests of everyone else. Again, it will lead to extreme conflict in the future. Jews would be the first ones to criticize White Americans if they did what some of them do.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Well yeah, Efrat wants to help Jews, not “citizens of the nation Israel”. Israel is 74% Jewish. What Efrat does is influence Jewish women to have their children, and they’ve done this with 80k women so far. Given their advertising in my OP, they very specifically don’t care at all if Muslims have abortions, and in fact they probably support it! Again, this is obvious from their advertising. Remember that Israel is the state that subtly conspired to sterilize Ethiopian migrants with birth control shots. So… you’ve proven my point?
I would argue this is mostly coincidental on the personal level — the exogamy rate of Jews and especially in academia is a great disproof of any conspiracy. Now, on the financial level? On the financial level it is indeed possible that leading ethnic-nationalistic Jews (religious zionists) would fund both pro-Jewish eugenics and be against eugenics applied to other people at large. Consider the case of Efrat
Senator Chuck Schumer, a noted pro-choice champion who has used the issue of abortion to secure his New York Senate, attended a 30th anniversary gala for Efrat. Schumer has been lauded by Planned Parenthood who called him a “hero,” with “a 100% pro-choice, pro-family planning voting record,” but in 2007 Schumer put his pro-choice position aside and joined his anti-abortion foes at the celebration. (Schumer’s office was contacted, but did not provide a comment for this story.)
American Friends of Efrat, the U.S.-based fundraising arm of Efrat (no relation to the settlement of the same name), is an Israeli anti-abortion group with hundreds of volunteers that counsel Jewish women against abortion and provide support for the first year of the child’s life.
According to IRS 990 tax reports, the American Friends of Efrat pulls from mainstream foundations including matching donations from Deutsche Bank, The Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Prudential Foundation. But the heftiest sums come from the Jewish community. Despite the fact that 89% of American Jews support abortion rights, the Federation Foundation of Greater Philadelphia sent the group $100,000 in 2004 and 2006, while the Jewish Community Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles gave C.R.I.B. just over $5,000 in 2007 and $10,000 in 2008. In addition, the Madav IX Foundation, a charitable organization funded by Jewish family foundations but administered by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, gave the C.R.I.B. program $10,000 in 2008. The Madav IX Foundation shares the same Ohio address of the Bennet and Donna Yanowitz Family Foundation that gave the C.R.I.B. program $2,000 in 2004 and $1,000 in 2007.
”Israel is currently fighting a demographic war for her survival. As we go to print Israel’s borders are in jeopardy. The Arab birthright is about double the Jewish birthrate. General Uzi Dayan speaking as the Director for the Council of National security announced: ‘Demographic projections forecast an Arab majority in Israel by the year 2020 less than 15 years from now”
It’s really important we understand what anti-semitism ought to mean. Anti-semitism in the form of hating the Old Testament religion or hating a race or hating a language is always and forever bad. But what do you call someone who says, “I feel uncomfortable with a fiercely in-group ethno nationalist network that has high level donors who only fund their own bloodline”? Whatever you call this latter thing, it is utterly justified IMO. The problem is that there’s an element of Judaism that is literally just that; they believe that their race and DNA is infinitely more important than any belief or practice, and they believe their existence on earth is to secure the Jewish People and a future for Jewish children. Should such a group be free from criticism? Only if we want the world to devolve into tribal infighting in 200 years.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
How would someone go about using statistics to determine if the name frequency in a book is too improbable to be by chance? For instance, if there’s a book in which three important characters share the same name which has a frequency of 25%, and then two other important characters share the same name, and all these characters are linked thematically. My intuition is that this is impossible to be chance, but how could you argue this statistically?
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
The most interesting question, the unanswered question, is that we are the only living beings who observe the universe and question its causes and purpose and creator. By evidence, we are the only living beings ever with this consciousness. Only in the past thousands of years have we been determined to name the creator of the universe, the being or ground of being of ontological arguments. Regardless of the “existence” of a personified being, there is certainly being itself, and this is the only eternal thing… so how fascinating is that only within the past 6000 years or so have we been able to behold eternity and immortality? When we name being itself or the Abrahamic “I am that I am”, we are naming that which is eternally eternal. You can imagine I suppose any other possible world, but all of these worlds must be, and so any sentient being when considering existence will also point at existence and maybe cry out “Abba”.
But I think, also, you can lead a man to look at the starry skies but you can’t make him wonder. If there is a God and He has his elect they will be the ones wondering.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Homosexuality is, conjecturally, naturally disgusting for the heterosexual. This doesn’t seem learned — no one taught me that two guys kissing is gross, it was just gross to consider until the normalization propaganda reduced the innate “disgust” alarm. (This would be a very useful instinct because it disincentivizes men to take out their lust on each other; in the same way, humans develop a disgust for the idea of sex with people they grew up with). So there may need to be a constant stream of reinforcement to keep homosexuality normalized. Additionally, if LGBeTc is in any way associated with a desire to transverse norms and exhibit oneself (IMO 60% likely), then its public push could be considered part of the sexuality. It’s also beneficial for Democrats to incense LGBTs against “tradition” or anything that codes right wing… until their polling says the trade off isn’t worth it anymore. Lastly, LGBT pride has a covert psychological effect that may or may not be intended by the deep state, in that it reduces sum total non-sexualized pride; if you want to reduce straight men having pride period (the most dangerous cohort), you would associate pride with gays, transvestites, and transgenders. This is a good technique for reducing people proud of their culture, for instance; there really aren’t many synonyms to the sophisticated construct of “having pride”.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Historically, the rulers of Europe had to appease the rulers of the Church, and the Church cared tremendously for the people of the nation. Also, it wasn’t the peasants and traders fighting in wars, but the kings and the knights.
It is certainly the case that our current batch of leaders in the West do not provide enough for their own people at the expense of foreigners, but this is actually an historical anomaly. If a King in the past did a bad job, he risked being usurped, overthrown losing the support of the Church and landowners, which could mean (ironically) a foreign king being invited to rule as a replacement.
Allegory and the Book of Jonah [Part 1]
Some scholars say that the Book of Jonah was composed in the 700s BC, and others claim a Hellenistic composition as late as 170 BC, but in fact both camps are wrong because the Book of Jonah is timeless.
It begins with Jonah, Son of Amittai, which can be etymologized to “Dove, Son of (my) Truth”. Foreshadowing alert. Doves in the Ancient World were used by sailors to seek out land. In Genesis, Noah releases a dove which comes back with an olive leaf in its mouth, thus confirming the presence of land — a salvation from the chaos of the waters and the consequences of God’s judgment.
Jonah is told by God to go to Ninevah (literally told to arise; rise up), the largest city in the world at one point and possessing a great history. Its cuneiform name I will leave as an exercise to the reader ( 𒀏 ). Ninevah was founded by Ashur, the grandchild of Noah. Ashur is the ancestor (in symbolic Biblical terms) of the Assyrians, and because history repeats itself, Israel and Assyrians were not on the best of terms. Jonah was commanded to go to an enemy city (!) and warn them against God’s impending judgment because of their wickedness. God wanted this city not condemned, but saved, and he chose as his emissary our old friend Jonah. And so Jonah arises, he rises to the occasion so to speak, he sets on his journey to… dip it. Jonah says (and I’m transliterating), fuck that shit are you kidding me. He goes in the complete opposite way.
In fact, and we are only on the third sentence, Jonah is said to flee to Tarshish through the port of Joppa. Pliny wrote regarding Joppa that it has antediluvian roots, that is, “before the flood”. Strabo writes that it was in Joppa that Andromeda encountered a whale, which attacked her because her mother claimed Andromeda was more beautiful than the nymphs of the sea. [These nymphs were the Nereids, the etymology of which means “true”, and were said to reveal the mysteries of Dionysus and Persephone. These mysteries involved a death and rebirth cycle and a celebration of wine in gratitude for God’s gift to wine]. The etymology of Joppa is “beautiful”. A Roman military general stationed in Judea in the early first century BC was said by Josephus to have brought the bones of the monster which attacked Andromeda from Joppa to Rome. Perhaps dinosaur or whale bones? But in any case this shows the resounding significance of this motif. This is a story that sounds out in the depths of the human spirit. The Old Man and the Sea, Moby Dick — these two leviathans of literature emerge from the same waters as Jonah.
Continuing on. Joppa was the main port for Jerusalem, at one point the only port for entry or exit for foreign vessels to Judea. And so Jonah goes from Jerusalem’s exitway to Tarshish. The etymology of Tarshish is convoluted. Some claim it is simply “sea coast”, perhaps by synecdoche. Historians identify it with an opulent and industrious Spanish city. We read in the Old Testament, “every three years came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes and peacocks.” And we also read, by a prophet, “the Day of the LORD of Hosts will come against all the proud and lofty, against all that is exalted — it will be humbled — against every ship of Tarshish. So the pride of man will be brought low, and the loftiness of men will be humbled.” And so whatever Tarshish means, it means something convoluted involving wealth and opulence from far away, and perhaps this convolution is to a greater meaning.
The Book reads that Jonah paid with his wages to leave from the port city of the city of God — old Jappa by Jerusalem — to board a ship he came across traveling to an opulent city of riches, Tarshish, away from the old and important yet adversarial city of Ninevah. Ninevah is not Jonah’s city! He doesn’t belong there! Ninevah is illustrious, ancient, far away and unwelcoming. Jonah would much rather hang out in comforting splendid Tarshish. The word used to board ships is “descend”. He descended to sail to Tarshish. And in fact, this is in juxtaposition to how God describes the sinfulness of Ninevah — their wickedness “rose up to my face”. Man’s actions are oft poeticized as incense that rises up to the sense by God. Jonah was told to rise up to the occasion of the Lord’s duties, but he descended instead to a city of riches far away from where he is supposed to go.
And so concludes the first three sentences of the Book of Jonah. Will do more next week if anyone is interested.
Art:
Required listening:
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A song about a whale.
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Loosely adjacent Weezer song. “The choo-choo train left right on time | A ticket costs only your mind | The driver said, "Hey man, we go all the way” | Of course we were willing to pay”.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
If by “playing games with definitions” you mean “contrasting the substance of democracy with the appearance”, then sure. That’s the whole purpose of thinking, and words. This is the intended purpose of words. Tell me how far apart you would measure an early American democracy and a democracy in which a ruling party controls all media exposure. Calling the latter non-democratic is a no brainer, because the substance of democracy is being thwarted. No one would call the latter “democratic”. I’m alleging that our current system is similarly thwarted from the fact that the median voter decides votes based on misinformation and propaganda purchased by wealthy parties.
unrealistically high bar
Early American democracy had a vigorous debate and discourse culture a la Lincoln-Douglas debates. These were real debates, published all over America, read by much of the population, with the debates lasting hours. [insert “this is what they took from you” meme.] The distance between 1800s democracy and ours is so stark that we should not call ours a democracy.
one, "psychological manipulation" is just "persuasion"
It’s persuasion with no scruples or guilt or code of honor*. And yeah, once corporations and wealthy donors are able to “persuade” anyone they want without regard for facts, we don’t have a democracy anymore, we have something else.
America doesn’t have a democracy in any substantive way. What we have is a colosseum of capitalist interests, where corporations and advocacy groups and institutions fund gladiators to shred each other in the public arena, mediated by social media companies and entertainment. The average American does not participate in or listen to debate or know where they could even do this. Instead, they are presented by political parties with figures and stories and myths, which they then subscribe to according to their limited knowledge and understanding. So what we have is a kind of perverse consumer capitalist meritocracy where wealthy people and corporations controls the trajectory of the nation. I don’t think you can consider this system “mostly democratic”, because democracy presupposes rational actors, informed voters, and an absence of psychological manipulation. If a man tricks a drunk woman into sleeping with him, and then uses brainwashing techniques to keep her around, we don’t consider that a consensual relationship, but abusive.
So, re: “shared civil religion”, the ideas of democracy and freedom are the civic religion. If everyone thinks there’s a democracy, then we have the main benefit of democracy (less rebellion) without its problems (mob rule). Ib the same way, people think they have freedom (despite an inability to decide how their children are raised or what they are taught, ie the continuation of any culture). They think they have a higher standard of living than Europeans, because the system’s thinktanks write studies that inaccurately compare wages without consideration of debt, work conditions, general social stress, commute times, car culture, healthcare, public school quality, etc.
Our civic religion is just… lying to the proles. And in a way, both Christianity and Islam share this feature. Islam has a vivid portrayal of an afterlife with sex and good food. Christianity on the other hand delegitimizes the value of “worldly” goods, like sex and good food, and instead orients the adherer toward focusing on a spiritual life which consists of non-acquisitiveness and non-competition.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Do you see a difference between defensive and offensive id pol? Or active versus passive? In your book, id pol is bad even if others have been waging it for a decade?
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Great write up.
Is there any major group in America that is more of a collective than religious Zionist Jews? It’s a combination of nationality, bloodline religion, singing odes to their ancestors in the Temple, praying for their bloodline, remembering historical slights… So, any criticism against white people as a collective applies some 60 fold to “collectivist” Jews, IMO (namely those who are deeply self-identifying, religious, and Zionist).
There exists a kind of Victimhood-Oppressor dynamic which is the lifeblood of Judaism since antiquity. You can read it in the stories of the Israelites against the Canaanites, and you can hear it in psalm 137: “for there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth […] Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”. This psalm is 3000 years old, and yet you can see in it how the Jews depict themselves as a collective. In a way, it reads like a scene from Schindler’s List. The threat of, let’s say, Jewish extremism is not something to be laughed at. Consider what happened in the 2nd century, when the Jews waged an insurrection and massacres hundreds of thousands of innocents:
Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.
The original Halo, playing it in like 2002. The story was super compelling and thrilling. The beginning of Kingdom Hearts, the island where the protagonist lives, was a great part of the story
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