saw a paper i edited do the rounds in the world's media today. new york times, bbc news, et cetera. not a bad level of job satisfaction, considering i'm sat on my ass slurping matcha coffees and getting handjobs on the regular from geishas while doing it all.
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i broke my last pair of earphones by falling asleep with them in (they had genuinely the best sound isolation of any in-ear thing i've ever used) and waking up to one bud, cracked open like a nut. not a pleasant morning alarm considering they were £900+ for the pair.
they lasted me for 5 years, though, including my entire travels around asia (which is what i bought them for, really). 1000's of hours of use in cafes, on public transport, not to mention those planet-choking plane rides. worth every penny considering that i work from a laptop in noisy environments often and really enjoy music. i look at high-end earphones in the same way i look at a smartphone: not that expensive when you amortise the costs over 4-5 years and consider the hours/day using them.
they lasted me for 5 years, though, including my entire travels around asia (which is what i bought them for, really). 1000's of hours of use in cafes, on public transport, not to mention those planet-choking plane rides. worth every penny considering that i work from a laptop in noisy environments often and really enjoy music. i look at high-end earphones in the same way i look at a smartphone: not that expensive when you amortise the costs over 4-5 years and consider the hours/day using them.
i believe in staying fashionable but it's important not to be 'too' trendy in middle age. leave the 'loud' and 'statement pieces' to the zoomers. it's a prerogative of youth to wear extremely skinny/baggy trousers, to sport an experimental haircut or facial hair, etc. nobody in their mid-30s has any business wearing high-designer baggy jeans. that shit looks desperate and dumb.
there's an implicit 'passing of the torch' with this stuff. there's something faintly embarrassing about middle-aged people chasing trends too hard. yes, they can afford it all much easier than the bright young things. but it's their arena. don't be the old guy at the back of the club.
there's an implicit 'passing of the torch' with this stuff. there's something faintly embarrassing about middle-aged people chasing trends too hard. yes, they can afford it all much easier than the bright young things. but it's their arena. don't be the old guy at the back of the club.
doing my bit to address the US trade deficit.
https://x.com/reprileymoore/status/1912 … 7OKnIcMVqg
it’s crazy how fast and casually the republicans are sliding into fascism. who the fuck takes a selfie outside a holding pen, while exploring more of that ‘extrajudicial’ incarceration?
it’s like they saw the worst excesses of abu ghraib and thought ‘let’s do it to street thugs too!’.
no surprises that the current defense sec has history of senior roles at gitmo.
it’s crazy how fast and casually the republicans are sliding into fascism. who the fuck takes a selfie outside a holding pen, while exploring more of that ‘extrajudicial’ incarceration?
it’s like they saw the worst excesses of abu ghraib and thought ‘let’s do it to street thugs too!’.
no surprises that the current defense sec has history of senior roles at gitmo.
macbeth the teacher dressing down with the kids.
skinny jeans have not been fashionable for about 8 years. they are conspicuously UNfashionable at this point. it's a death sentence in highly fashion-conscious tokyo or seoul. biggest marker of a terminally belated westerner.
i mean, with that rationale you would want to ban half of all recreational drugs (“pilly willy” as the yookay ravers say) plus most medication. don’t anti-depressants fuck with your sex drive and ability to climax too? not to mention hk’s regular ketamine regime … not exactly performance-enhancing stuff.
the rumour that musk has a disfigured or broken penis is movie villain stuff. very funny. i want it to be true.
i mean it’s all too on the nose, so to speak, already. a bunch of racist dweebs who grew up in apartheid south africa (thiel, musk) are now basically running the american state.
the rumour that musk has a disfigured or broken penis is movie villain stuff. very funny. i want it to be true.
i mean it’s all too on the nose, so to speak, already. a bunch of racist dweebs who grew up in apartheid south africa (thiel, musk) are now basically running the american state.
it's a man who regards his wealth and power as enough to, erm, impregnate any woman he sets eyes on.
that's absolutely fucking insane, lmao. it all plugs into his weird eugenicist 'great replacement theory' ideology. we must breed! and science nerds with erectile dysfunction who own space companies should breed more than anyone else! we are carrying the best of humanity on our shoulders!
propositioning a person half your age over an app you own with a cold-call about HAVING A BABY is absolutely sociopathic shit.
it's funny that musk plays on the soros conspiracies and things like that, while clearly travelling in the same circles as epstein in his past and regularly doing shit like this. i don't believe for a second he is without serious skeletons in his closet.
that's absolutely fucking insane, lmao. it all plugs into his weird eugenicist 'great replacement theory' ideology. we must breed! and science nerds with erectile dysfunction who own space companies should breed more than anyone else! we are carrying the best of humanity on our shoulders!
propositioning a person half your age over an app you own with a cold-call about HAVING A BABY is absolutely sociopathic shit.
it's funny that musk plays on the soros conspiracies and things like that, while clearly travelling in the same circles as epstein in his past and regularly doing shit like this. i don't believe for a second he is without serious skeletons in his closet.
yeah and all sorts of public alerts too. they're used really widely, almost to the point of spam. police investigations, missing persons, earthquakes, wild fires, tsunami alerts, etc.
the really serious ones totally hijack your phone and turn it into a maximum-volume alarm, with a voice you've never heard before shouting at you. not even like a siri machine text-to-speak voice or anything. the best way i can describe it is like the alert voices you hear in plane cockpits when its stalling or something. had no idea my phone could even do that. those are genuinely scary. closest thing i've felt to that back-of-neck hair-raising, deep instinctual fear. i imagine it's like when those people on hawaii got a message saying they were about to get nuked
i got kind of used to tuning out the regular text alerts when i first moved to korea during peak covid. their contact tracing system was so state-of-the-art that they'd be able to message everyone in a city district as soon as a new cluster was reported, down to the very block of the affected street. you'd check your phone in the morning and have like 7 text alerts filling up your home/lock screen. neat but concerning in the wrong political context/use-case.
i would post examples of the crazy korean contact tracing but its all in hangul alphabet without any courtesy translation (lol).
the really serious ones totally hijack your phone and turn it into a maximum-volume alarm, with a voice you've never heard before shouting at you. not even like a siri machine text-to-speak voice or anything. the best way i can describe it is like the alert voices you hear in plane cockpits when its stalling or something. had no idea my phone could even do that. those are genuinely scary. closest thing i've felt to that back-of-neck hair-raising, deep instinctual fear. i imagine it's like when those people on hawaii got a message saying they were about to get nuked
i got kind of used to tuning out the regular text alerts when i first moved to korea during peak covid. their contact tracing system was so state-of-the-art that they'd be able to message everyone in a city district as soon as a new cluster was reported, down to the very block of the affected street. you'd check your phone in the morning and have like 7 text alerts filling up your home/lock screen. neat but concerning in the wrong political context/use-case.
i would post examples of the crazy korean contact tracing but its all in hangul alphabet without any courtesy translation (lol).
welcome to every day in east asia.
the really bad ones take over your phone and turn it into an improvised alarm. i was awoken once, last summer, at about 5am in the morning with a female voice shouting 'WARNING! WARNING!'. only time i've ever experienced one at that grade. i woke up and made a yelping noise i've never heard myself emit before in my life. great fun.
there's an app called NERV which is pretty cool, not sure if it has coverage in the states. great for giving information in near real-time.
the really bad ones take over your phone and turn it into an improvised alarm. i was awoken once, last summer, at about 5am in the morning with a female voice shouting 'WARNING! WARNING!'. only time i've ever experienced one at that grade. i woke up and made a yelping noise i've never heard myself emit before in my life. great fun.
there's an app called NERV which is pretty cool, not sure if it has coverage in the states. great for giving information in near real-time.
wearing a crucifix and not knowing the key dates of easter sure is something. most non-religious people in the anglophone world are aware of the calendar days of easter. you're claiming to be a catholic.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1911435718397690004
lmao. imagine being one of the 17 IVF kids he never acknowledges in public.
lmao. imagine being one of the 17 IVF kids he never acknowledges in public.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p … 235314218/
this rolling stone write-up on the internal workings of DOGE is so funny. who wudda thunk it!
to quote a twitter user:
this rolling stone write-up on the internal workings of DOGE is so funny. who wudda thunk it!
to quote a twitter user:
DOGE is made of people who believe they can derive all things from first principles because they're Very Special Boys who are good at using the computer; a trait that is shared (to varying ends) by a bunch of really, really annoying posters.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06 … -champagne
on the barclay brothers. crazy read. britain in a nutshell.
on the barclay brothers. crazy read. britain in a nutshell.
https://x.com/palantirtech/status/19106 … 7OKnIcMVqg
on the plus side, bright high-schoolers can now be hoovered up by shadowy silicon valley firms funded by parodic fascist supervillain peter thiel. yay! educating the best and brightest technicians of tomorrow’s total surveillance state/race war/atomic holocaust (you get to choose!!!)
on the plus side, bright high-schoolers can now be hoovered up by shadowy silicon valley firms funded by parodic fascist supervillain peter thiel. yay! educating the best and brightest technicians of tomorrow’s total surveillance state/race war/atomic holocaust (you get to choose!!!)
engineering is a low-status job and the dearth of engineering talent in the low-population west can more than easily be made up for by skimming the 1% cream of the crop from india’s technical universities.
doing the necessary and checking the failsafing saaahr.
with AI i’d say about 70% of day-to-day scientific expertise has been solved for. the world had to suffer 25 years of the jay’s of this world rubbing their HVAC ‘engineering nous’ in our faces aka plugging numerical values into wolfram alpha or somesuch other solved-for problem, all while pretending they’re daily developing new forms of calculus or pondering the riemann zeta distribution or whatever the fuck.
plus aren’t the indians all plenty experienced in air conditioning systems by now anyway?
doing the necessary and checking the failsafing saaahr.
with AI i’d say about 70% of day-to-day scientific expertise has been solved for. the world had to suffer 25 years of the jay’s of this world rubbing their HVAC ‘engineering nous’ in our faces aka plugging numerical values into wolfram alpha or somesuch other solved-for problem, all while pretending they’re daily developing new forms of calculus or pondering the riemann zeta distribution or whatever the fuck.
plus aren’t the indians all plenty experienced in air conditioning systems by now anyway?
https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/19107099 … 7OKnIcMVqg
realistically, is he going to last another 3 months?
he was totally at odds with the administration on tariffs.
realistically, is he going to last another 3 months?
he was totally at odds with the administration on tariffs.
that effect isn't limited to 'english speaking countries' and certainly isn't a modern phenomenon. fascism itself requires a 'germ' or 'outsider' that can be blamed for all of society's ills and discontents. the idea of a scapegoat is literally biblical in origin, and is nothing new.
the ruling class strategy of sowing internecine conflict amongst the plebs is basically as old as rome too.
the ruling class strategy of sowing internecine conflict amongst the plebs is basically as old as rome too.
unrelated, but J D vance trying to 'sleight' china by referring to them as 'chinese peasants' is all sorts of odd. isn't this the guy whose path to power was by playing on a parody of his 'hillbilly' origins? and why would you try to insult the fucking CCP on their peasant origins? lol. that's kind of the whole banner appeal of communism. having ancestors who were peasants is high status in china ffs, lol.
vance has a terminally online 4chan-millennial kind of world view. extreme ignorance combined with vicious discrimination.
vance has a terminally online 4chan-millennial kind of world view. extreme ignorance combined with vicious discrimination.
lack of investment spending is one of the most reprehensible aspects of the neoliberal paradigm. 'trickle up' without even taking care of the barest necessities to keep the lights on for future generations. pillaging, essentially, with as much sense of noblesse oblige or responsibility to the nation.
we had a conservative government in power with record low interest rates for ~15 bloody years and all they did was take things away, death by a thousand cuts, 'austerity' invoking war-time rationing and forbearance ... while the fat cats had their euphemised 'quantitative easing' (i.e. socialism for the megarich). you couldn't even convince the main retail banks to lend to stricken plebs post-2008, despite being flush with bailout money taken straight from the taxpayers. you can't make this shit up. no attempt whatsoever to leverage exceptionally favourable conditions for big, multi-generational development projects.
the craziest thing about the entire 21st century so far is that an existential, once-in-a-century event like the 2008 GFC didn't cause a reckoning with the prevailing system. everything went back to 'business as usual' with alarming alacrity. worst, certain administrations soon rolled back the new regulations and punishment clauses for the big banks and wall street, the so-called correctives. we just flopped straight back to the failing model and shushed any political alternatives. almost every single groundswell of support for movements like corbyn, sanders, OWS, podemos, syriza, pasok, etc. were ignored within about one electoral cycle.
we had a conservative government in power with record low interest rates for ~15 bloody years and all they did was take things away, death by a thousand cuts, 'austerity' invoking war-time rationing and forbearance ... while the fat cats had their euphemised 'quantitative easing' (i.e. socialism for the megarich). you couldn't even convince the main retail banks to lend to stricken plebs post-2008, despite being flush with bailout money taken straight from the taxpayers. you can't make this shit up. no attempt whatsoever to leverage exceptionally favourable conditions for big, multi-generational development projects.
the craziest thing about the entire 21st century so far is that an existential, once-in-a-century event like the 2008 GFC didn't cause a reckoning with the prevailing system. everything went back to 'business as usual' with alarming alacrity. worst, certain administrations soon rolled back the new regulations and punishment clauses for the big banks and wall street, the so-called correctives. we just flopped straight back to the failing model and shushed any political alternatives. almost every single groundswell of support for movements like corbyn, sanders, OWS, podemos, syriza, pasok, etc. were ignored within about one electoral cycle.
all those nerd companies with lord of the rings names are cartoonishly evil. and they’re helping to police the borders. neat!
https://x.com/sanktmaxtci/status/191008 … 7OKnIcMVqg
https://x.com/sanktmaxtci/status/191008 … 7OKnIcMVqg
there are whole political economies based around the 'ideal' number of people to keep unemployed or underemployed. a reserve army of labour does wonderful things for the labour market. and full employment isn't good news for the boss class generally. workers start to band together and ask for things.SuperJail Warden wrote:
https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/opinion/7-million-young-men-dont-want-to-work-we-must-force-them/
NY Post article about the missing 7 million men who are NEETs.
...
I am embarrassed to have ever been one of those people who are like "everyone needs to work." >:[
As a worker I think it is great that a lot of men aren't working. That means there are more opportunities for the people who want to remain in the workforce. Not just employment opportunities but also relationship and political opportunities.
I am trying to think of an offensive term for workers who want everyone to work. I can't quite figure this one out.
well, yes, which is why i said earlier that the current status quo has suited US monetary (not to mention foreign) policy perfectly well.Dilbert_X wrote:
They buy US debt.uziq wrote:
“we buy from vietnam and taiwan more than they buy from us!”
Its been a way of bootstrapping their economies but once bootstrapped maybe they don't need it any more.
Collapse of the US dollar and high inflation for Americans is going to be fun to watch.
the balance of trade is off? yes, sure, but the rest of the world are buying bonds and relying on you for development loans.
the euros taking the piss with their luxury goods and automobiles has historically been a small price to pay for securing their close alliance during the cold war – when most of europe was still up for grabs by various forms of communism and socialism, if not the USSR itself – and onwards through the NATO era. the world hegemon could accept importing more BMWs than it exported escalades, c'mon. europe was a parking lot for their tanks and jets.
one of trump’s biographers or one of the many court psychologists or whatever in the press corps pointed out that trump has been a vocal supporter of tariffs ever since some event where a japanese (or possibly chinese; i think the former due to it being in the 80s/90s) new-money type outbid trump on a condo or some development deal. that was when he realised that other countries, the east asian tiger economies in particular, were facilitating his sort of capitalist expansionism much better than his own system, and were pretty well on their way to gobbling up his gold-leaf lunch.
some japanese yuppie got the pad that trump wanted and he has been intent on tariffing the shit out of america’s rich allies ever since.
some japanese yuppie got the pad that trump wanted and he has been intent on tariffing the shit out of america’s rich allies ever since.
weakening the perceived safety and stability of the USD seems like a great way to achieve the multipolar world that pretty well every other power except the US and her allies would like.
the whole post-bretton woods world order was set up for america’s benefit. to see a populist preach to the masses that they are the victims of this system is very fucking odd. americans have been relying on the developing world as one big sweatshop of immiseration, child slavery, dollar-a-day satanic mills, zero unionisation or rights, etc. all so that they can buy $15 leggings from Shein or whatever the fuck.
“we buy from vietnam and taiwan more than they buy from us!” yeah no shit! your ‘development’ experts descended on those countries precisely to build them up as satellite manufacturing hubs for your domestic market, while extracting a maximum of profit! there’s going to be a deficit!
the american establishment has for decades weaponised the international banking system and the dollar standard to ensure that developing countries’ remain right where the US wants them: wage suppressed and straitjacketed by the IMF. no shit that poor workers in the developing world aren’t consooming american goods like rich yanks.
the whole post-bretton woods world order was set up for america’s benefit. to see a populist preach to the masses that they are the victims of this system is very fucking odd. americans have been relying on the developing world as one big sweatshop of immiseration, child slavery, dollar-a-day satanic mills, zero unionisation or rights, etc. all so that they can buy $15 leggings from Shein or whatever the fuck.
“we buy from vietnam and taiwan more than they buy from us!” yeah no shit! your ‘development’ experts descended on those countries precisely to build them up as satellite manufacturing hubs for your domestic market, while extracting a maximum of profit! there’s going to be a deficit!
the american establishment has for decades weaponised the international banking system and the dollar standard to ensure that developing countries’ remain right where the US wants them: wage suppressed and straitjacketed by the IMF. no shit that poor workers in the developing world aren’t consooming american goods like rich yanks.
seems about an hour after i made my post that a japanese hedge-fund kamikaze’d the bonds market and caused trump to do a ‘whoopsie’ u-turn on his tariff war.
what was it all for? the idea that the USA can click its fingers and the world will pay attention is fading fast.
what was it all for? the idea that the USA can click its fingers and the world will pay attention is fading fast.
a century of 'containment' and arranging the world market according to the desiderata of washington.
if this situation continues, the container will soon become the contained. owning your own allies like taiwan, japan and korea and forcing them into china's orbit is so ridiculous. achieving by a trade war what total armed conflict could never hope to achieve.
if this situation continues, the container will soon become the contained. owning your own allies like taiwan, japan and korea and forcing them into china's orbit is so ridiculous. achieving by a trade war what total armed conflict could never hope to achieve.
long-term occupancy, actually.
if it's been '30 years in the making' (ok sure) then why is this all a symptom of 'bad humanities leadership'? are you fucking dumb?
the modern western consensus, i.e. neoliberalism, was built by lawyers, MBAs and technocrats. their foundations were not wide reading in the classics or the liberal humanist tradition; they didn't derive from liberal arts schools or patrician yale art history degrees. thatcher was inspired by hayek and the american establishment took after milton friedman and chicago school economics. it has precisely been NUMBERS PEOPLE who have set up this modern world in the interests of dodgy market ideology that masquerades as 'rational', 'scientific', etc. that's literally what has structured the modern world system, hayek-friedman et al, not people writing dissertations on romantic poetry or power-mad philosophy dons. the entire point of PPE is to produce these little business-suited technocrats and soundbite-producing politicos, whose only knowledge of 'economics' is basically friedman orthodoxy 101. where's the pernicious influence of too much humanities learning, in this picture?
you are a fucking idiot, man.
the situation is sustainable precisely for as long as the USD is the global reserve currency of choice. this entire situation has been beneficial to mainstream american monetary policy for decades.
the modern western consensus, i.e. neoliberalism, was built by lawyers, MBAs and technocrats. their foundations were not wide reading in the classics or the liberal humanist tradition; they didn't derive from liberal arts schools or patrician yale art history degrees. thatcher was inspired by hayek and the american establishment took after milton friedman and chicago school economics. it has precisely been NUMBERS PEOPLE who have set up this modern world in the interests of dodgy market ideology that masquerades as 'rational', 'scientific', etc. that's literally what has structured the modern world system, hayek-friedman et al, not people writing dissertations on romantic poetry or power-mad philosophy dons. the entire point of PPE is to produce these little business-suited technocrats and soundbite-producing politicos, whose only knowledge of 'economics' is basically friedman orthodoxy 101. where's the pernicious influence of too much humanities learning, in this picture?
you are a fucking idiot, man.
the only time the US has actually ran a trade surplus was ... during the great depression.You can't run a country with a U$0.5 Trillion trade deficit every year for years, its not sustainable.
the situation is sustainable precisely for as long as the USD is the global reserve currency of choice. this entire situation has been beneficial to mainstream american monetary policy for decades.
i knew the jews were good at business, but i had no idea they were expert squatters too. they've been living rent free in your head for your whole life.
i'm not beserk at all. none of this has affected me in the slightest?Dilbert_X wrote:
Still tickled that you're going berserk because a STEM nerd has had about sis weeks of fucking things up compared with about two centuries of the other crowd.uziq wrote:
such a fucking asinine comment. yes, and without capitalism you wouldn't have coffee or a phone to post from. i guess we can't criticise anything because 'we live in a society'?
where's that meme pic, surely you have it on file somewhere.
it's just funny you've been cumming in your pants over elon's rise in the last few years, and now it turns out your posterchild 'engineering geniuz' who is 'taking humanity to the next step' is a fucking idiot and an insecure nerd who lies about high-scores on video games. talk about feet of clay.
this is the biggest and most expensive demonstration of 'i told you so' in world history. why would you think i'm mad? i don't base my politics on nerd personality cults or repressed rage from not being cool during university. i'm doing fine. are you okay though?
for the better part of a decade now you've been saying 'STEM is best, let scientists be in charge', and people have replied to you that your weird fixations and teenaged tribalism about undergraduate degrees is laughably disconnected from the actual real world and complex issues. i've provided you with a book length of replies with examples of when 'government run by science' has gone disastrously wrong. then you come here and post some random link, apparently having heard of Rand corporation for the first time, and have your 'woah bro' moment. rooting around in the dark undergrowth of your own ignorance. scientists are capable of bad leadership and awful politics, ackshually! and they've been like this for long centuries too! it's almost like someone's undergraduate credentials aren't the best heuristic for understanding this phenomenon!
https://x.com/itsjacksonbbz/status/1909 … 7OKnIcMVqg
dilbert wants you know this is what peak eco-credentials looks like.
a lifetime of living like this is the best thing you can do for the planet.
dilbert wants you know this is what peak eco-credentials looks like.
a lifetime of living like this is the best thing you can do for the planet.
OWS was far from a 'burn it down' movement, though. it had a valid critique of the system that was no longer working for 99% of people. it's a shame it had almost zero lasting effect on the political conversation, other than to further scare mainstream democrats into backing the clinton brand of centrism-as-usual. but i don't think OWS (or corbynism for that matter) were movements based on rage or resentment; they had a clearly articulated sense of injustice stemming from inequality.
there's also a lot of inter-generational resentment. the small number of MAGA trumpers who are watching their 401ks evaporate are being greeted by a voluble crowd of gen X and younger who are like 'fuck you boomer, we don't even have pensions'. it's one big cauldron of resentment.
at some point the social contract has been totally abandoned and one generation has stopped caring about passing on a better world to the next. coupled with insane division stoked on any number of identitarian or culture wars issues. the billionaire class have the plebs by the balls.
it was also, i should say, the psychology of brexiteers too. the system wasn't working for them so any major disruption presented a chance for the cards to fall another way. they had little to lose, so why the hell not? well, a lot of remorse from people who saw their lives and businesses affected ... deporting migrants so that you can then go back to working in a factory in the garment industry sure is one way of being a conservative.
at some point the social contract has been totally abandoned and one generation has stopped caring about passing on a better world to the next. coupled with insane division stoked on any number of identitarian or culture wars issues. the billionaire class have the plebs by the balls.
it was also, i should say, the psychology of brexiteers too. the system wasn't working for them so any major disruption presented a chance for the cards to fall another way. they had little to lose, so why the hell not? well, a lot of remorse from people who saw their lives and businesses affected ... deporting migrants so that you can then go back to working in a factory in the garment industry sure is one way of being a conservative.
such a fucking asinine comment. yes, and without capitalism you wouldn't have coffee or a phone to post from. i guess we can't criticise anything because 'we live in a society'?
where's that meme pic, surely you have it on file somewhere.
where's that meme pic, surely you have it on file somewhere.
i have explicitly mentioned the Rand corporation before as an example of the STEM geniuses from MIT/caltech/carnegie mellon/etc. who have taken society in a shitty direction. THOSE are the highly qualified technocrat experts like you have advocated for.
as i have pointed out, many, many times, humanities snobs and classicists don't have a monopoly on toxic political ideology. lots has been done in the name of 'market rationality' which has been directly harmful to your average person. Rand corporation specifically was the hotbed of developing 'game theory' during the cold war and after, which has led to this current geopolitical juncture. a bunch of military-industrial adjacent hawks. thanks, STEM!
as i have pointed out, many, many times, humanities snobs and classicists don't have a monopoly on toxic political ideology. lots has been done in the name of 'market rationality' which has been directly harmful to your average person. Rand corporation specifically was the hotbed of developing 'game theory' during the cold war and after, which has led to this current geopolitical juncture. a bunch of military-industrial adjacent hawks. thanks, STEM!
honestly, i don't think even conscientious and well-meaning people can comprehend the unfolding polycrisis (tooze again).
'everything under heaven is in utter chaos', and all that pseudo-maoist rhetoric.
you have a president who is either simply incompetent or too unintelligent to grasp the global financial system, or he's maliciously trying to shake the tree and see what falls out.
you have the gathering storms of AI which are going to make tonnes of service workers and bureaucrats unemployed very soon, adding to the pile which have been dismissed according to political diktat from the white house/DOGE.
climate change and increasingly crazy weather patterns, including conflicts over water and mass movement of peoples to the rich northern world, are only going to get worse and worse in the coming decades. we have flown past every 'red line' set out by the IPCC or UN bodies. 1.5 degrees is already a pipe-dream fading in the rear-view mirror of an american SUV.
putin is gaining ground in ukraine, slowly but surely. sanctions haven't worked in any way. europe has been abandoned by the post-WW2 defense aegis and is now remilitarising. the baltic states, germany, poland, etc. are very realistically preparing their citizens for war. they have long centuries of experience with a belligerent russia on their doorstep. it's not just 'strong man' posturing in that part of the world, as the game may be perceived by trump and his cronies.
there's an ongoing genocide in gaza which shows no signs of abating. trump seems to have lost interest or the will to engage with it. israel has carte-blanche, presumably up until they cross the ultimate red line for the arab world and/or iran. at which point, who knows. another major world conflict is very possible.
china, taiwan. enough said. what happens with russia/ukraine and israel/palestine are all in a way 'connected' to this looming geopolitical threat. xi is an extremely prudent planner and a good strategist by any measure.
then to add to this the american people really seem to think the best course of events is to send everyone back into sweatshops and factory conditions, like those their 19th century forebears escaped (minus a few limbs, fingers, eyes, etc. and plus a few long-term chronic illnesses). like that's their best choice. all to 'own the libs' or 'show who is world number one baby' or something or other. who knows.
a massive global realignment is under way, that is for sure. the thing is, it's going immeasurably better for the non-western powers than ever putin or the CCP could have hoped for. i think the CCP were all planning to assume top position by the middle of the century. instead, 25 years ahead of schedule, america is committing some act of economic self-sabotage, apparently fuelled by a strange combination of rage and resentment.
the saddest thing about it, to me, is that the billionaire class have precipitated this crisis. the entire liberal world order was set up for their convenience for the last 40 years. the pinball machine was full-tilted in their direction. they have hoovered up immense amounts of wealth from the productive energies, labour, genius and invention of their societies and workers. cosied up to the state/government and benefitted from immense tax deductions, federal grants and dispensations, access to publicly funded R&D, etc. whatever, you name it. they have just taken it all ... even after the global financial crash, which should have put half of them in jail and straitjacketed the rest of their excesses, they went straight back to 'business as usual', refusing credit to crippled workers and small businesses after being bailed out, etc.
and now they're the ones in the white house administering 'medicine' to the population. it's fucking sick. eat the rich!
'everything under heaven is in utter chaos', and all that pseudo-maoist rhetoric.
you have a president who is either simply incompetent or too unintelligent to grasp the global financial system, or he's maliciously trying to shake the tree and see what falls out.
you have the gathering storms of AI which are going to make tonnes of service workers and bureaucrats unemployed very soon, adding to the pile which have been dismissed according to political diktat from the white house/DOGE.
climate change and increasingly crazy weather patterns, including conflicts over water and mass movement of peoples to the rich northern world, are only going to get worse and worse in the coming decades. we have flown past every 'red line' set out by the IPCC or UN bodies. 1.5 degrees is already a pipe-dream fading in the rear-view mirror of an american SUV.
putin is gaining ground in ukraine, slowly but surely. sanctions haven't worked in any way. europe has been abandoned by the post-WW2 defense aegis and is now remilitarising. the baltic states, germany, poland, etc. are very realistically preparing their citizens for war. they have long centuries of experience with a belligerent russia on their doorstep. it's not just 'strong man' posturing in that part of the world, as the game may be perceived by trump and his cronies.
there's an ongoing genocide in gaza which shows no signs of abating. trump seems to have lost interest or the will to engage with it. israel has carte-blanche, presumably up until they cross the ultimate red line for the arab world and/or iran. at which point, who knows. another major world conflict is very possible.
china, taiwan. enough said. what happens with russia/ukraine and israel/palestine are all in a way 'connected' to this looming geopolitical threat. xi is an extremely prudent planner and a good strategist by any measure.
then to add to this the american people really seem to think the best course of events is to send everyone back into sweatshops and factory conditions, like those their 19th century forebears escaped (minus a few limbs, fingers, eyes, etc. and plus a few long-term chronic illnesses). like that's their best choice. all to 'own the libs' or 'show who is world number one baby' or something or other. who knows.
a massive global realignment is under way, that is for sure. the thing is, it's going immeasurably better for the non-western powers than ever putin or the CCP could have hoped for. i think the CCP were all planning to assume top position by the middle of the century. instead, 25 years ahead of schedule, america is committing some act of economic self-sabotage, apparently fuelled by a strange combination of rage and resentment.
the saddest thing about it, to me, is that the billionaire class have precipitated this crisis. the entire liberal world order was set up for their convenience for the last 40 years. the pinball machine was full-tilted in their direction. they have hoovered up immense amounts of wealth from the productive energies, labour, genius and invention of their societies and workers. cosied up to the state/government and benefitted from immense tax deductions, federal grants and dispensations, access to publicly funded R&D, etc. whatever, you name it. they have just taken it all ... even after the global financial crash, which should have put half of them in jail and straitjacketed the rest of their excesses, they went straight back to 'business as usual', refusing credit to crippled workers and small businesses after being bailed out, etc.
and now they're the ones in the white house administering 'medicine' to the population. it's fucking sick. eat the rich!
bristol, my friend, bristol.
dilbert posting these shitty 400x400 pixel meme images is really the most boomer coded thing you do.
elon musk looks cringe and stupid when he does it, and he has the excuse that he's on a near-constant 400mg of intravenous ketamine.
elon musk looks cringe and stupid when he does it, and he has the excuse that he's on a near-constant 400mg of intravenous ketamine.
your suggested fix is to thrust scientists and engineers into the top jobs, as if they'd de facto do a better job because of their undergraduate qualifications. there are countless examples on the historical record of nations who tried to run government 'scientifically' and failed miserably. the 20th century is a graveyard of such experiments.
my recommended remedy would be to promote better access to politics for people regardless of background. i'm all for wider citizen participation and getting more experience in the room, or via consultative processes. widen democracy with citizen's assemblies. bring in small business and leaders of industry. sounds good! anything to dethrone the insane problems we face with inequality and with a self-perpetuating elite.
i couldn't care any less what degree a politician read for. there is no 'master key' degree that will teach someone how to run a society. most political questions aren't really one of raw intellectual competency. and they certainly don't have some 'solution' that can be figured out if you get enough eggheads together in a room. dominic cummings tried to harness 'big data' and nerd wonks with 'no ideological baggage' to run society and it managed to deliver us the most incoherent and worst-performing covid response in all of europe.
my recommended remedy would be to promote better access to politics for people regardless of background. i'm all for wider citizen participation and getting more experience in the room, or via consultative processes. widen democracy with citizen's assemblies. bring in small business and leaders of industry. sounds good! anything to dethrone the insane problems we face with inequality and with a self-perpetuating elite.
i couldn't care any less what degree a politician read for. there is no 'master key' degree that will teach someone how to run a society. most political questions aren't really one of raw intellectual competency. and they certainly don't have some 'solution' that can be figured out if you get enough eggheads together in a room. dominic cummings tried to harness 'big data' and nerd wonks with 'no ideological baggage' to run society and it managed to deliver us the most incoherent and worst-performing covid response in all of europe.
i really wish you wouldn't always invoke 'historically' with such a shaky grasp of history as a subject. pretty fucking richly ironic, when you think about it.
what does it even mean, besides? you do realise hardly anyone got BScs and MScs prior to the modern research university, right? no shit MAs from oxon are going to be over-represented in the sample prior to the 1950s. the modern sciences as fields of study and research didn't exist. isaac fucking newton got a BA and MA.
no disagreements that the UK in general is a class-bound place and the same people, over and over again, have run the show. we are not putting forward our best for the top jobs. i don't disagree with that at all. but saying 'the humanities' are to blame is so fucking retarded that it's funny. hereditary privilege is to blame, networks of power are to blame, not what someone dilly-dallied around reading (or not reading) for 3 years when a young man. that's just so asinine.
it always comes down to this autistic fixation you have with undergraduate education, when it has no bearing at all on someone's political career or leadership qualities. reading plant biology doesn't make for a better premiere than reading the history of the crimean war. i don't know how else to spell this out for you. an entitled and indolent elite bred out of centuries of class-based privilege is going to make for bad leaders no matter what 3-letter degree appellation you grant them.
what does it even mean, besides? you do realise hardly anyone got BScs and MScs prior to the modern research university, right? no shit MAs from oxon are going to be over-represented in the sample prior to the 1950s. the modern sciences as fields of study and research didn't exist. isaac fucking newton got a BA and MA.
no disagreements that the UK in general is a class-bound place and the same people, over and over again, have run the show. we are not putting forward our best for the top jobs. i don't disagree with that at all. but saying 'the humanities' are to blame is so fucking retarded that it's funny. hereditary privilege is to blame, networks of power are to blame, not what someone dilly-dallied around reading (or not reading) for 3 years when a young man. that's just so asinine.
it always comes down to this autistic fixation you have with undergraduate education, when it has no bearing at all on someone's political career or leadership qualities. reading plant biology doesn't make for a better premiere than reading the history of the crimean war. i don't know how else to spell this out for you. an entitled and indolent elite bred out of centuries of class-based privilege is going to make for bad leaders no matter what 3-letter degree appellation you grant them.
because PPE at oxford is 'the' anointed course that gives access to power. it's an insider gig.
PPE is not representative of the humanities. it's not taken seriously by any humanities scholars. it is a side show, a nursery for the political elite.
i don't think the course should exist, don't get me wrong.
but why can't you say the problem is 'old etonians', or 'public school boys', who are undoubtedly overrepresented at the top and with a disastrous track record? why can't you say 'PPE', which produces this toxic brand of politics and 'business as usual' technocracy? that's very relevant. why do you have to say 'oxford humanities'? 99% of scholars in the field didn't go to public school or aspire to run a quango on tufton street.
instead you're invoking this very vague stereotype about 'posh university men' from the 19th century or something, as if it has any bearing on the complexion of the political elite today. it doesn't! there are just as many upstarts as there are landed gentry who studied classics because that's what their grandfather the 17th earl of arrogance studied in 1903.
rishi sunak? priti patel? the current leader of the tory party, kemi? the hell do they have to do with this caricature you're making of posh effete dandies who go around with a boutonnière reading evelyn waugh?
PPE is not representative of the humanities. it's not taken seriously by any humanities scholars. it is a side show, a nursery for the political elite.
i don't think the course should exist, don't get me wrong.
but why can't you say the problem is 'old etonians', or 'public school boys', who are undoubtedly overrepresented at the top and with a disastrous track record? why can't you say 'PPE', which produces this toxic brand of politics and 'business as usual' technocracy? that's very relevant. why do you have to say 'oxford humanities'? 99% of scholars in the field didn't go to public school or aspire to run a quango on tufton street.
instead you're invoking this very vague stereotype about 'posh university men' from the 19th century or something, as if it has any bearing on the complexion of the political elite today. it doesn't! there are just as many upstarts as there are landed gentry who studied classics because that's what their grandfather the 17th earl of arrogance studied in 1903.
rishi sunak? priti patel? the current leader of the tory party, kemi? the hell do they have to do with this caricature you're making of posh effete dandies who go around with a boutonnière reading evelyn waugh?
tariffs ended up being placed on antarctica simply because they used chat-GPT to devise the list. that's really the 'government with technology' you're advertising for.
half the people who have passed through the oxford 'national politics' mill aren't 'born to rule' though, it's totally non-fucking-sensical.
thatcher was a chemist who grew up above a shop. gove was an orphan who spent his youth as a socialist, for christ's sake. what about these types communicates 'born to rule' in any sense of the phrase? it's like arguing with a person who is senile and confused. this is not a cogent take, dilbert. it is incoherent.
i've always said to diagnose the problem for what it is, which is elite re/production at the top, and thesedays of a peculiarly centrist and neoliberal bent. your average 'born to rule' toff is probably more likely to be a much older strain of Conservative than the 'nice party' types that cameron-osborne ushered in with their rebranding; and is definitely something else from the populist tv celebrity that boris represented, being much more like the trump show than anything else in british political history. you're simply mischaracterising the hereditary elite in britain, and it confuses the issue for no good reason.
the oxford union isn't even part of the university of oxford ffs. clearly the political strivers who are attracted to that game of politics are ones to watch. clearly a lot of very identifiable psychological 'types' and future sociopaths waiting for their time in front of an applauding crowd. worrying, yes. every society has these sites of elite production. what does it have to do with 'oxford humanities', for fuck's sake?
thatcher was a chemist who grew up above a shop. gove was an orphan who spent his youth as a socialist, for christ's sake. what about these types communicates 'born to rule' in any sense of the phrase? it's like arguing with a person who is senile and confused. this is not a cogent take, dilbert. it is incoherent.
i've always said to diagnose the problem for what it is, which is elite re/production at the top, and thesedays of a peculiarly centrist and neoliberal bent. your average 'born to rule' toff is probably more likely to be a much older strain of Conservative than the 'nice party' types that cameron-osborne ushered in with their rebranding; and is definitely something else from the populist tv celebrity that boris represented, being much more like the trump show than anything else in british political history. you're simply mischaracterising the hereditary elite in britain, and it confuses the issue for no good reason.
the oxford union isn't even part of the university of oxford ffs. clearly the political strivers who are attracted to that game of politics are ones to watch. clearly a lot of very identifiable psychological 'types' and future sociopaths waiting for their time in front of an applauding crowd. worrying, yes. every society has these sites of elite production. what does it have to do with 'oxford humanities', for fuck's sake?
as i have told you countless times, 99% of graduates of humanities bear little to no resemblance to these types.
the PPE or oxford union climbers are clearly their own side-show, the university reading they do is really immaterial. they go there because they want to get into the game of politics, not because they're earnest scholars of the humanities. you can't tell the difference between boris's 'roman statesman' act and him being supposedly a paragon of the classics, which is just all sorts of funny. nobody with an ounce of sense would be confused about that.
you're trying to portray the disaster of british government as being due to an hereditary caste of posh nobs who read literatoor and act like they're born to rule. then you cite boris johnson, our version of trump and whose government was typified by dom cummings administering 'shock therapy' to whitehall in a play-for-play parallel to musk/DOGE, and ... michael gove? an orphan from scotland who started life as a student labour politician with a thick scottish brogue? yeah, you may have to revise this 'england has been destroyed by patrician toffs' thing. because gove is not it.
the PPE or oxford union climbers are clearly their own side-show, the university reading they do is really immaterial. they go there because they want to get into the game of politics, not because they're earnest scholars of the humanities. you can't tell the difference between boris's 'roman statesman' act and him being supposedly a paragon of the classics, which is just all sorts of funny. nobody with an ounce of sense would be confused about that.
you're trying to portray the disaster of british government as being due to an hereditary caste of posh nobs who read literatoor and act like they're born to rule. then you cite boris johnson, our version of trump and whose government was typified by dom cummings administering 'shock therapy' to whitehall in a play-for-play parallel to musk/DOGE, and ... michael gove? an orphan from scotland who started life as a student labour politician with a thick scottish brogue? yeah, you may have to revise this 'england has been destroyed by patrician toffs' thing. because gove is not it.
michael gove a humanities patrician, lmao hahahah. he's the exact same sociological type as thatcher: a petit-bourgeoisie from the margins of power. he found his place in the tory party being a student politician scot with a thick accent who soon learned to speak RP and adopt the nastiest elements of toryism to fit in. ah, yes, gove, the posh 'born to rule' type nonpareil! the orphan from aberdeen!
do you have the foggiest fucking clue what you're talking about?
do you have the foggiest fucking clue what you're talking about?