Tag: Machiavelli
-
Palace revolt?
= = = = = START MACHIAVELLI: To arrive at this position depends not entirely on worth or entirely on fortune, but rather on cunning assisted by fortune. One attains it by help of popular favour or by the favour of the aristocracy. The worst that a prince has to expect from a hostile people…
-
Full intelligence achieved!
Headline: A.I apocalypse: Terrifying study simulated what artificial intelligence would do in five military conflict scenarios… and it chose WAR 100% of the time AI has achieved full humanity! It chooses exactly the same thing human rulers choose in every situation! If a computer system chose peace in any circumstance it would be considered dangerously…
-
Taibbi is an aspectless idiot
One headline is enough: The Fix is In. Taibbi constantly plays the fake surprise game, pretending that journalism used to be honest and politics used to be honest. Now the Horrible Other Party has turned everything sour, but we can restore the old pristine state of integrity by “electing” My Wonderful Party. 2/3 of the…
-
Reprint on original sin
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = START 2020 REPRINT: Basic generality: All factions of Deepstate are blackmailers. Blackmailer is another name for secret-keeper. Any profession that has the habit of confidentiality will end up blackmailing and destroying normal people if it’s not rigidly constrained. The first Deepstate was Rome. Priests hear…
-
Useful insider view
Erik Larson writes from an insider view, noting that the latest style of AI has turned into a total juggernaut with no questioners. Before the recent inflection point of 2014, he saw quite a few doubters inside the establishment. Now, thanks to the Tech Tyrants with their social algorithms, everyone is Moving Together In The…
-
Honest goal
I’m tired of supporting activists who claim to be “holding power accountable” or “speaking truth to power” or “changing the world”. Machiavelli tells us that none of those events ever happen. Until now, Jeffrey Tucker’s Brownstone outfit was claiming to cause change in the circles of power, but never showing any real change. Now Jeffrey…
-
Who’s really Informed?
Random pointless rant. It’s been clear for a LONG time that the “informed citizen” myth is just a sales pitch for Deepstate propaganda. We’re supposed to pay attention to the mainstream media and attend college so we can be “enlightened informed citizens who are capable of participating intelligently in elections”. This nonsense runs deep on…
-
Overthinking
Protos tracks the predictable “sides” responding to the SEC’s approval of the Blackrock takeover of bitcoin. (After a premature front-running “fake” message gave the shorts a chance to move the price.) Both “sides” are overthinking. Ockham. Get rid of the pinhead angels. It’s quite simple. Larry Fink wants to own the bitcoin market, therefore Larry…
-
2012 as seen from 1962
This 1962 publication by IRE (now IEEE) celebrated the 50th anniversary of the organization and looked ahead to 2012 with a series of “lookbacks”. The supermodern superadvanced world-peaceful 2012 inhabitants looked back with contempt at horrible neanderthal 1962. Technical predictions were highly accurate and not really prophetic, since all the necessary pieces were either finished…
-
Reader directs my attention
After several weeks of essentially zero readers, I’m finally seeing a couple of non-bot readers in the WordPress statcounters. One reader is catching some items that I’ve forgotten about. In this item I was highlighting a 1938 radio editorial by Raymond Gram Swing who debunked the then-current Trotsky and Niemoller trials. = = = =…
-
No it wasn’t “your campaign”.
Repoofs are crowing because “our campaign” got the Harvard president to resign. No it didn’t. She resigned because Larry Fink and Bill Ackman told her to resign. Same as all the other recent resignations. What’s different? THIS TIME the Repooflicans happened to be on the same side as power. The side that wants more war…
-
Proper science
Greenwald is doing what all journalists and commentators SHOULD be doing. He pulls together facts and asks the one critical question, the question that explains the facts, the question that nobody else has asked. Glenn is performing proper journalism and proper science. Gather facts, form a testable question that hasn’t been asked before, try to…
-
Always the bait-n-switch
Pieces by journalists trying to fix journalism always fail. Right in the middle of pretending to avoid Machiavelli and avoid fake divisions, they spill their true side, which is always the same side. This piece by Amanda Ripley gets off to a great start, listing all the sins of fake dividers and counseling how to…
-
Since I’m always…
Since I’m always yammering about tenure, I should mention this story, even though I don’t have enough info to mention it intelligently! News this week includes a university chancellor in Wisconsin who was fired for making porn videos with his wife. He’s suing on free speech grounds. I doubt that the suit will succeed. He…
-
Wanna revolution?
Let’s say the “courts” decide Trump is ineligible because he didn’t officially halt a four hour trivial protest in one building, but the “courts” have no problem with Trump for ORDERING AND IMPLEMENTING THE BIGGEST CRIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, IMPRISONING AND STRANGLING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR TWO YEARS. If the “voters” give him a majority…
Polistra's Mill 