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Cake day: July 15th, 2024

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  • Hates - no. But giving off the impression of being weird is not that hard. I’m certain quite a few people would believe something like this about me purely due to being a sunlight-avoiding wimp bad with words (in verbal conversations).

    So due process is a good thing. For each Andrew Tate there are a few dozens at least of people whom “the society” would eagerly accuse simply because of being asocial and weird. Like that folk psychology with red flags, manipulations and other shit. People practicing it can wound an autist. But I seriously doubt those would help them avoid a serial maniac.





  • Things were better because people would “go to a different brand” and sue morons more often. They’d also be more confident of their own knowledge in various technical things.

    Things becoming more complex was used to gaslight a lot of people into questioning their own knowledge about what they need. Such gaslighting first and foremost works via people being ashamed to be stupid and pretending they know it all.

    Most (even technical) people are like this - they feel that they don’t understand the world around them, it’s stressing, spying, rigged, chaotic in the wrong places and ordered in the wrong places, - but they are ashamed and pretend. And what they pretend to think specifically and what they try to follow is communicated to them via ads, via movies, via corporate bullshit. Because they have nothing else to turn to.

    It’s a bit similar to the way some autistic people do imitation - they too imitate ads and movies more than people around them (well, maybe also imitate people they are romantically attracted to, or those they consider cool).

    Or to the way state propaganda works in atomized societies - people don’t have good horizontal ties, but pretend to have them, while taking the material from what they hear on TV.

    20 years ago would you use something like an Android phone with no buttons or would you crush it with a hammer? Would you use something like Windows 10 or would you ignore that crap? Would you buy a car that spies after you?







  • We need to like, mass-spam the entire Midwest america with historical romance novels with bodice-ripping sex scenes. I think if more guys just got lost in that shit, we would have a lot less tension and pain in the world.

    Doing that to somewhat compensate for harm from romantic chatbots and porn would be absolutely beneficial.


  • Yeah, I once got interested like a bored person with a special interest in 70s sci-fi, Asimov, Star Wars, Wiener’s “Cybernetics”, all those aesthetics. Because leftist ideologies are kinda associated with them.

    You come to trots, they seem fine and tolerant (they even consider tolerance and humanism as their main difference from stalinists), until you mention anarcho-syndicalism as something normal or ask questions (in the spirit of normal brainstorm) about the ideal society they describe in their articles. Here they either become hostile or ghost you.

    Cause it’s their (trots) fucking religion that every cook can guide a state, that a military of a trot state looks like every adult having a gun at home, and in case of war them all assembling, making a shot each and going home (quoting that Swiss joke).

    And that their direct democracy and planning system too should not be really designed. Some “modern technologies” will do that.

    They are just not interested in discussing how to actually build that shit. Only in the daily activity of a couple of obscure trade unions and in hating “the rich” or/and “the bourgeoisie”.

    You come to ansyns, they react like “you’re already one of us if you want, now get off us, we’re not interested in that shit”.

    You come to ancoms, admittedly some conversations are interesting, but talking specifics with them is like Napoleon going into Russia - the conversation seems to be going on, but you’re increasingly feeling that you’re getting lost without gaining anything.

    You come to stalinists, they tell you your opinions will be considered when they kill everyone they don’t like.

    You come to usual left anarchists and may get a good conversation occasionally, but in the end realize that they are mostly interested in their hydroponic farms.

    YMMV, but I don’t see much consolidation.


  • In the days of Apple II and similar machines a person who operated a computer knew it, because computers were simpler and because there was no other way and because you’d generally buy a cheaper toy if you didn’t want to learn it.

    Also techno-optimism of the 70s viewed the future as something where computers make the average person more powerful in general - through knowing how to use a computer in general, that is, knowing how to write programs (or at least “create” something, like in HyperCard).

    That was the narrative consistent with the rest of technology and society of that time, where any complex device would come with schematics and maintenance instructions.

    Then something happened - most humans couldn’t keep up with the growing complexity. Something like that happened with me when I went to uni with undiagnosed AuDHD. There was a general path in the future before me - going there and learning there - but I didn’t know how I’m going to do that, and I just tried to persuade myself that I must, it should happen somehow if I do same things others do with more effort. Despite pretense and self-persuasion, I failed then.

    It’s similar to our reality. The majority stopped understanding what happens around them, but kept pretending and persuading itself that it’s just them, that the new generation is fine with it all, that they don’t need those things they fail to understand, etc. Like when in class you don’t understand something, but pretend to. All the older generation does that. The younger generation does another thing - they try to ignore parts of the world they don’t understand, like hiding their heads in the sand. Or like a bullied kid just tries not to think about bullies. Or like a person living in a traditionally oppressive state just avoids talking about politics and society.

    That narrative has outlived its reality not only with computers.

    People are eager to believe in magic. Do you need to know how to cook if you have dinner and breakfast trees (thank you, LF Baum)? So they think we have such trees. It’s an illusion, of course. Very convenient, isn’t it, to make so many industries inaccessible to amateurs.

    It’s very simple. There’s such a thing as “too complex”. The tower of Babel is one fitting metaphor.

    You don’t need this complexity in an AK rifle. Just like that, you don’t need it in an analog TV. And in a digital TV you need much less complexity too. We don’t have it in our boots - generally. We don’t have it in our shirts. Why would we have it in things with main functionality closer to them in complexity than to SW combat droids?

    I think Stanislaw Lem called this a “combinatoric explosion” when predicting it in one of his essays.



  • I disagree, they would do a lot of good if part of any weapons being available (not just guns, but FPV drones and ammo for them, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, small mortars, and so on), but not for crime levels. The benefit would be in improving political stability (no, it wouldn’t help MAGA and such, because they don’t really want a violent takeover, they want an administrative takeover and then unpunished violence against those who can’t defend themselves).

    When only rifles are available, it doesn’t help that end at all - you can’t fight the government or the invading army or some terrorists with just rifles.

    So I agree that one has to pick a lane here. If we understand private weapons’ ownership as that well-organized militia to protect against tyranny yadda-yadda, then that includes a lot of stuff. Drones with grenades at least. If we don’t and, say, the national guard is that militia, then allowing just pistols and rifles lacks the advantages, preserving the harm.



  • Oh. People from English-speaking countries don’t sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.

    Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh … worse than Tom Clancy and that’s an achievement I’m not sure everyone is capable of measuring.

    It’s funny though how such series about “USSR” talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the “17 moments of spring” series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.