imo claire a/leon b is the intended path and leon a leads to some weird truncations - especially since it makes more sense to emphasize G-Birken encounters in Claire's story
08.03.2026 01:43
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imo claire a/leon b is the intended path and leon a leads to some weird truncations - especially since it makes more sense to emphasize G-Birken encounters in Claire's story
North Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh oil depot is ablaze tonight after it was targeted by multiple US-Israeli airstrikes. Apocalyptic scenes filmed by Iranians driving on the nearby highway. Local reporters saying firefighters can’t put it out. This depot is critical energy infrastructure for Iran.
Must be weird to have an actor parent, at least one that's in big movies and shows. Like imagine watching Lord of the Rings and suddenly Frodo is just hanging out with your dad. Surreal.
No political economic system can be immune to hype or bad ideas, even the most rational system will have to roll the dice on bad investments in the process of finding the good ones, especially when it comes to new tech and ideas - but we're talking megabillions pumped into pure horseshit here
(Of course a lot of media is bought and paid for at some level or another but) the result is a lot of money, prestige, relationships and ego all get bound up on propegating increasingly obvious frauds because nobody wants to admit to being had, lying, or to "ruin it for everyone"
So suckers and rational actors both march like lemmings to the same cliff, and the inertia of all that wealth, and the implied intelligence, knowledge and wisdom behind it, legitimizes it for everyone else. "You couldn't get rich being stupid, so it must be real if they buy into it!"
This dovetails with the nature of speculative bubbles. Even if you know something is stupid or a scam, you buy in because you anticipate others will buy in, causing the price to inflate on a purely tautological basis. You rationally invest irrationally to capitalize on other's irrationality.
Investors are not smarter or broadly more informed than anyone else. If anything the breadth of their portfolios means they're not paying much attention to any one thing. Great wealth distorts your perspective and sense while generally surrounds you with sycophants & conmen. Recipe for bad judgement
It's been obvious for like three years now that this tech was hitting the point of vastly diminishing returns on capability for exponentially increased cost in resources and it speaks to how dysfunctional the economy is that it took this long for major players to notice (or at least to admit it)
Canadian Grindr rules. I swear to God, a guy just sent me a dick pic next to a Tim Hortons cup to indicate its relative size and proportion
Uncircumcised? That's "roll up the rim to win"
The appeal of "Neo Reaction" is that it lets them neatly square this circle by appealing to the secret suspicion of all socially maladroit, resentful, halfbright nerds: I'm the only real person, the only one who counts, all these other people are stupid cattle who Deserve What's Coming
They fear complexity, responsibility and death, but are too powerful to abjure agency and too egocentric to be humble or content in mere humanity. They are powerless before higher powers like The Market, which take on the burden of morality and responsibility, but they will conquer death & build god
Like a lot of things rich guys believe and fund, the AI consciousness thing is in part driven by a desire to abscond from the responsibility of what they've made. It also explains why so many of them think we're in a simulation. Doesn't matter if everybody died if we're all just 1s and 0s baby!
My Weekend Essay for the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social: why the 'left-realist' critique of int’l law is a form of disenchantment that obscures more about political reality than it illuminates.
A short critique of Perry Anderson via EP Thompson, Carr, Weber.
www.newstatesman.com/world/middle...
I remember learning about the Hays Code in film school and how it made it so that any amoral protagonist had to meet karmic justice by the end of the film and going “wow, that’s really silly” and then once a week I log online and see people argue that we need stuff like that now or it’s problematic
It is still happening. No country is stepping in. Cuba has helped so many movements and people around the world and they are being abandoned to die
I've made 7 free online courses to help you read Karl Marx
Reading Marx's Capital v1 (2019 & 2007 eds)
Reading Marx's Capital v2
Reading Marx's Grundrisse (2023 & 2020 eds)
Marx, Capital, & the Madness of Economic Reason
The ABC of Contemporary Capital
davidharvey.org/reading-capi...
If you are making a weird indie game and you have a demo you need to let me know.
i can't watch tv shows unless they directly teach me, a grown adult, important lessons about being nice and getting therapy. this is the sole purpose of art and entertainment
walter white should have looked directly into the camera and said "cooking meth is bad"
*punching wall later* stupid, stupid, stupid! You should have called it “Blighto”! You’re never good enough! This is why she left you!
Panty and Stocking homaged this panel in the revival
Ah, the question every redheaded guy must one day ask himself: Am I content to be a mere fetish, or do I want someone who loves me for me?
I feel like Veronica and I would have nothing in common.
If our present, and the last century or so, constitute the "best of all possible worlds" - that it's impossible and insane to imagine or try for anything better - than honestly we might as well push the big red button right now and give them cockroaches their turn at the wheel.
(Peaceful to the extent that powerful, developed nations don't bomb and invade others nor is there a particular expectation or fear that they might)
The peaceful, socialist world is not a utopian ideal, it's a sensible approach to obvious problems. The future it imagines is one still rife with conflicts, problems, mismanagement, human fallibility, stupidity... just not to the outrageous extent that we today accept as "normal".
The end of poverty, brutal mass exploitation, genocide, major wars, all these shocking yet routine horrors - this is not a wild utopian dream. It's a realistic expectation for a technological, global civilization of thinking, feeling beings. Mere absence of dystopia is not utopia.
Oh don't get me wrong we should also have regulation! But that has limited efficacy (or could even be exploited as a sales pitch - the medicine the government is keeping from you because it's too good!) without addressing the problems with medical practice and provision.
