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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Friday Fun Thread for May 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Happy May the Fourth! Here’s a scene Grok wrote for me from Galen Erso, architect of the Death Star, in the style of (and with the morals of) Ayn Rand. I made a few tweaks here and there for accuracy and to emphasize certain points. May the Force be with you.




My mind is my own, and no force in the galaxy can claim it. The Empire, with its blasters and its threats, its bureaucrats and its banners, believes it can chain a man’s reason to its will. They took my body, dragged me from Lah’mu’s quiet fields, murdered Lyra, and held Jyn’s shadow over me like a blade. They thought they could seize my intellect, bend it to their machine of death. Fools. They do not understand the nature of a mind that creates. They cannot fathom the fire that burns in a man who knows his own worth. I am Galen Erso, and my mind is not theirs to command—it is mine, inviolate, eternal.


In the sterile halls of Eadu, surrounded by the timid and the compromised, I labored under their gaze. They demanded a weapon, a Death Star, a monument to their collectivist nightmare—a machine to crush the individual beneath the weight of fear. They could have built it without me eventually, with blood-thirsty sycophants managing the output of scientific minds cowed by fear. They thought my equations, my crystals, my genius would serve their purpose more quickly, and they were right.


But purpose is not theirs to dictate. Purpose is the province of the creator, the man who thinks, who dares to see beyond the violent herd’s clamor. They gave me kyber, the heart of the stars, and expected me to forge a club for their brutality. Instead, I wove a trap. In the reactor’s core, I hid my truth: a single exhaust port, unshielded, able to cause reactor overpressure; a whisper of defiance that could bring their monstrosity crashing down. This was not sabotage—it was justice. It was the assertion of my right to create, to define the terms of my work, to refuse their perversion of my mind’s fire.


Let them parade their TIE fighters and their Moffs. Let Krennic strut with his cape and his lies. They are nothing—parasites who produce no value, who exist only to steal the creations of better men. I saw their world, a galaxy of gray submission, where the individual is ground to dust for the sake of their “order.”


I will not kneel. I will not let my work, my reason, my life’s essence, be twisted into their instrument of enslavement. The flaw I built is my signature, my declaration that no man’s mind can be forced to betray itself. If the Rebellion finds it, if Jyn carries my spark, they will strike the blow I could not. And when the Death Star burns, it will be my mind—free, unbowed, triumphant—that lights the flame.


They thought they could break me with threats, with loss. But a man who knows his own value cannot be broken. My love for Lyra, for Jyn, is not their weapon—it is my strength, my reason to fight. I am no martyr, no sacrificial lamb for their altar. I am a creator, and I have chosen my stand. The Empire may take my life, but they will never take my soul. In that reactor flaw, I have carved my freedom, my truth, my self. Let them build their empires on the ashes of others. I have built my own monument, and it will outlast them all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Being confusing on accident isn’t a reason to kick you off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
America thrived on a whale fall after WWII, but the bones are picked dry and the Baby Boomers were the ecosystem which thrived upon it. That’s my new metaphor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cardinal Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem? Let's go full DBZ naming with Pope Basil as his pope name. The meme pope.


But seriously, his appointment in Jerusalem as the first Gulf War loomed, and his living through all the terrible things of the past thirty years, have given him a perspective I think the church should be willing to embrace with the highest regard, given the situation in the Holy Land.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a fanatic for stories, a fan of the best SF stories, this resonates heavily with me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He could be renamed Pope Basil, to keep the theme. St. Basil was an influential theologian and bishop.


Most major and minor characters in the Dragonball saga are named for food (or rarely, clothing or musical instruments). Pizzaballa vs. Zuppi  is therefore weak metafictional evidence we’re living in a Dragonball fanfiction.


Time to start chi-building exercises.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my attempts to turn Triessentialism from "noticing an interesting pattern" into "a viable philosophy for life and business," I've recognized possession of things and territory as part of the vertebrate brain's instinctual ontology. It's so powerful and human an instinct that the only thing which does more damage than following it is trying to squash it entirely. (See the history of socialism.)


Possession, linguistically, indicates a relationship, not specifically ownership. Its default use as an indication of ownership is a sign of the power of the proprietary instinct. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters about demonic tempters who are quite keen psychologists and studiers of the human condition in their quest to gain souls for their "Father Below." One passage on linguistics has always stuck with me and has shaped my view on ownership:




We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the difference sense of the possessive pronoun - the finely grade differences that run from 'my boots' through 'my dog', 'my servant', 'my wife', 'my father', 'my master' and 'my country', to 'my God'. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of 'my boots', the 'my' of ownership.




I've written elsewhere about my ontology of values: utility, experiences, status, and agency. Everything someone values as a possession (or makes an object of commerce) conveys at least one of these four values. Possession of land conveys the status of landowner which fulfills the deep-seated mammalian need for territory, makes experiences on that land relatively controllable, and enables both utility (toward goals) and agency (control). It is seen as something to pass down to one's heirs. Ownership of land (as with any owned thing) can also convey the four debts: hassle, bad experiences, negative status, and loss of other choices.


I have concluded that legally recognizing this instinctual reality is a societal good.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This makes me wonder if “Shakespeare’s women roles were always played by men in theatrical drag” was solely due to the oft-claimed patriarchal misogyny caused by rigid religious sensitivities about putting women on display, or if transwomen and/or crossdressing gay men convinced society to let them monopolize the parts. I’m guessing some mix.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My conspiracy mind wonders if there’s some secret switch in Signal which only gets enabled (by who?) for journalists, so they can view chats unseen in “spectator mode” for reporting purposes. This would explain why nobody saw JG in the chat. If true, Signal would need to be dumped ASAP by everyone.


Less sensationally, there may be another Jeffrey Goldberg [or (JG) generic user icon] who Waltz meant to invite, perhaps someone with top secret clearance in an intel agency who wasn’t expected to weigh in, but was supposed to stay informed. J is the most common first initial in America, and G is in the top ten last initials: https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2011/01/14/two-letter-initials-which-are-the-most-common.html


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There’s more sanity to some of these lines than people think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To steelman the “European Civil War” concept, the monarchies of Europe involved in WWI were basically cousins from the same elite family.


As for WWII being similar, a case could be made that the onerous restrictions on Germany were basically a continuation of the same war but without bullets.


(Not that I believe either.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Breaking Bad is filmed and set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, my hometown. In a pivotal episode, “Face Off,” set in July of 2009 but filmed around 2010 and aired in 2011, I saw a vehicle in a parking lot greatly resembling the vehicle I owned in 2009.


It wasn’t that vehicle. I had already sold that vehicle by the time the episode was filmed, to a private buyer who was almost certainly not a Netflix prop purchaser. Upon rewinding and rewatching, it’s not only a slightly different tint, it’s a different year’s model.


Still, it’s fun to see what could have been my vehicle in a parking lot I know I’ve never parked in, at a time when I still had it. Whenever I rewatch the episode with friends or family, I can point it out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The giant tripped in 2008, and fell to his knees during coronavirus. He’s still trying to absorb all that momentum with his arms, but we will hear a thud at some point.


I’m guessing when the Boomers hit Social Security full-tilt while their kids and grandkids don’t have replacement payees.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
(I wrote a better version of this answer, but the web ate it when I accidentally reloaded the page. Oof.)


I saw what I now call Triessentialism first in a passage which many scholars say was not in the original manuscript but was added by a later hand due to tradition: the doxology of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.




For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.




I had been pondering the make-up of man, what the heck the "spirit" and the "soul" are and how they're differentiated, and "where" they are in relation to each other in the body in a Christian ontology. I'd also been thinking the idea that emotion and logic are as fundamentally different from each other as are the material world and the immutable laws of logic. (You can't hold a "two" in your hand, nor burn a "deduction" to release warmth.)


It was while pondering the differences between the three ontological categories that I realized this distinction was also present in the doxology. My reasoning?


    

  • We see the power of God mostly in the Old Testament where God the Father acted with great power on behalf of His chosen people
    • 

  • The word "spirit" is usually used for emotions instead of supernatural beings in everyday life ("the spirit of Christmas" and such) and glory is about our emotions when beholding God
    • 

  • The best king would be someone omniscient: infinitely intelligent, infinitely wise, and who knows everything.
    • 



So I identified the power as belonging to God the Father, the glory to the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom to the Son. (Of course, all three Persons have power and glory, and God is rightfully sovereign over everything, so it's not a "this Person of the Godhead doesn't have X" heresy.)


Once I'd seen this pattern there, I started seeing it throughout Scripture. (I don't have the Bible where I highlighted them (highlit?) with me at the moment, and Google is being unhelpful as usual nowadays.)


So do I have more reason to identify Jesus the Son with logic, and not the Father or Spirit? Quite a lot. John described Jesus as both "the Logos"/"The Word" and "the Light." Jesus called Himself "The Way, the Truth, and the Light."


Early Christians said they were followers of "The Way," a word that means both paths and processes. Paths lead the sojourner from the origin to the destination. Processes turn intention into action. Logic is about processes and algorithms as much as it is about interactions of the descriptions of things.


In Chinese, "Tao" means "The Way" and implies "The Right Way". Logos was a Greek concept akin to the Tao: an inherent order and regulation underlying the universe. Heraclitus pioneered the concept and wrote about it in various ways, non-systematically and sometimes contradictorily as a universal consciousness or the mind of a supreme Being, but usually as a receptacle of truth. Other writers picked it up before John, but John identified the Logos as co-equal with God the Father.


Light has taken on a more fascinating meaning to me ever since I pondered waveforms as a carrier of the information of what impacted the wave's medium and holograms as a capture of that waveform. The unknown writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has some of the highest quality Greek prose in the New Testament, speaking with the precision of a programmer and the expression of a poet.




hos ōn apaugasma tēs doxēs kai charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs




"He is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory (doxa) of God and the exact imprint (charakter) of His nature (hypostasis)..." - English Standard Version


"He is the emittance of His majesty and the hologram of His person..." - my gloss


To perfectly describe God the infinite Being would take an infinitely precise Likeness, as flawless and divine as He. To measure God would take a standard as perfect and infinite as He.


In a way, the logical measurement is the "son" of that physical thing which is measured, existing with it even if the measurement has not been read out or recorded.


The Muslim writers sometimes speak of the Quran ("The Recitation") as God's uncreated word, not something created by humankind, the ultimate revelation, existing eternally with God.




Gödel's incompleteness theorems were among the first of several closely related theorems on the limitations of formal systems. They were followed by Tarski's undefinability theorem on the formal undefinability of truth, Church's proof that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable, and Turing's theorem that there is no algorithm to solve the halting problem. - Wikipedia




Here, then, is that perfect formal logic which describes God: Jesus of Nazareth, who told the religious elites to love, and was killed for it. His resurrection is the proof of His correctness and their corruption.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I never fold laundry. ADHD makes it interminable.


I have a "clean" basket and a "dirty" basket, and one type of socks which get turned inside-out when I take them off for washing and turned right-side-in just before putting them on. The easy life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How the world would be different if Spielberg hadn't deferred to Lucas and instead had taken the helm he'd been offered! Three fantastic films, the build-up of the chosen one, only to see him fall to the Dark Side in bits and pieces, obsessed by the loss of the attachments in his life which he'd been told to eschew from the start.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, there’s a chance Santa Claus will slap you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An intriguing new theological heresy came to me as I was preparing to sleep.


I'm a Trinitarian Christian and a geek, so I can't help getting nerd-sniped by discussions of the Trinity's internal "economy". My Triessentialism philosophy started from praying that God would resolve the apparent logical contradiction of the Trinity, and seeing an answer which has satisfied me for over twenty years. I've listened to the Trinities podcast (which turned out to be run by a blatant unitarian) and discussions of different formulations of understanding God's Trinitarian nature.


Now, I'm a fan of the Lutheran Satire channel's videos because of the hilarious and interesting ways they puncture heresies. Their most famous video, St. Patrick's Bad Analogies, source of the "That's modalism, Patrick!" meme, is a must-watch on or around St. Patrick's Day.


So this is the thought which came to me at bedtime and put a wide grin on my face. What if each Person of the Trinity is the only One Who exists, truly God before all and above all, but each in a different one of the three overlapping realms of the Physical, Logical, and Emotional? What if none of the Persons of the Trinity has ever met the others, but would have had to infer their existence through their effects on humans were He not omniscient?


It would make a fun and fascinating cosmological foundation for a fictional work of high fantasy, but here in our universe it's an obvious heresy, and I don't believe it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For grognards, any impressive use of the venerable Commodore 64 is worth watching. Take this demo, Nine, for example.


To someone unaware of the hardware limitations of the device, it’s a fun little animation suitable for kids. But show it to someone who’s tried to code on the beige beastie, and you’ll hear “but that’s impossible!” and “How?” several times. For starters, the C64 can only display eight “sprite” graphics at once, and they can’t go beyond the border.


It turns out the author is a coding magician using multiple very subtle and invisible tricks to make it all work out. This is the C64 equivalent of Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, and a fantastic job it is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If thousands of Ukrainians are deported to Ukraine, especially if fighting is still ongoing or resumes in the near future (more likely than not given Russia's stated territorial ambitions), I wonder if this event will be remembered in the same way turning Jewish arrivals by boat prior and during WW2 is remembered.




Why (outside of naked partisan historical shaping) would turning over refugees to be press-ganged to the Eastern Front be remembered this way, but not paying for there to be an Eastern Front in the first place?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does a section of the city commonly called “the warzone” and officially termed “The International District” count as “an area of effect anti-regeneration ward”?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I gknew I was right!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The word "random" should not be used as a synonym for "arbitrary." In particular, it should only be used when there is a corresponding distribution that is being sampled from.




But then RAM would be harder to say: AAM.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve started using the buzzing G sound from “menagerie”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do find myself occasionally wondering if the local abandoned Walmart (shoplifting killed it) might be a fine place for a novel nonprofit to set up an indoor tent city for the local homeless, with security guards and nurses on staff, a doctor dropping by every day for prescriptions, and the in-store pharmacy restored to full functionality. The big outdoor parking lot might be additional space for the hardier hobos willing to rough it.