Tag: Machiavelli
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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…
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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…
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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. = = = =…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The basic question
Now ordinary people are free to say that the “virus” panic was a fraud. I’m sure many of them recognized it all along, but kept quiet to survive. Silence is rational when noise is useless. Even the executives who participated in the torture are backing away slowly, blaming and framing others as usual. Our executives…
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Never thought I’d say this…
Quora is a better reading experience than Substack now. Quora hasn’t changed. It’s still a few interesting writers (mostly lawyers!) and a jungle of pointless bot-questions about math and IQ. The pointless bots are easy to spot and ignore. The interesting writers don’t feel obligated to join meaningless disputes. Substack has changed since it introduced…
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Medieval mindset
The medieval mindset is hardass realistic about human nature, especially the nature of demons. Machiavelli wrote it all down in systematic and scientific form so we can read it now, but ordinary peasants were equally realistic. You can hear the realism in religious songs and prayers from the period. They didn’t ask God to Elect…
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Wrong variable
Still in pointless rant mode. Tired of fake outrage and fake surprise over government spying on its citizens, and “warrantless” wiretaps. First: All governments spy on their citizens. Knowing what the people are doing and thinking is a necessary INPUT to government. Feedback loops are necessary for any functional machine. This input used to be…
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How to increase trust
Spokane News posted one of our multiple daily overdose deaths, then added this explanation: Yes, this happens a lot in the area. True, we do not post them all. We posted this as it was called out as a cardiac arrest which calls for a very large response so we post to avoid the area.…
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Good clarifier
Nate Silver, the meta-pollster, writes a great clarifier on the current positions, and the current trends, of political labels. He does an especially good job describing the Woke category. Here he gets close to a major fact about universities but doesn’t see it or doesn’t say it: = = = = = START QUOTE: Social…
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Proves my point
The Christians are bashing the pres of Harvard for doing EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED HER TO DO until right now. Before October they were bashing university presidents for opposing free speech. Now the Harvard pres is supporting free speech as the Christians wanted, but supporting it for people the Christians hate. This idiocy proves my…
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