Data Centers Are Not Your Enemy

 From Tierney's Real News:

Jump on any social media site today or attend any town hall across rural or suburban America right now, and you’ll hear a terrifying script about data centers. You will be told they are monstrous energy hogs that will eat up prime farmland, drain local water supplies, blast disruptive noise, and spike your monthly utility bills. You will be told it is all a scheme by out-of-touch Big Tech elites to expand their power at your expense.

If you are already fed up with government overreach, corporate greed, and the destruction of our rural landscapes, these arguments sound completely reasonable. In fact, they sound patriotic. But there is a massive, dangerous piece of the puzzle being deliberately left out.

While we are told these facilities are just glorified warehouses hosting social media apps and streaming video, our adversaries see them for what they truly are: the foundational infrastructure of modern warfare. The hard truth is that America cannot defend the future with yesterday’s infrastructure. The debate over data centers is no longer a localized zoning dispute—it is a matter of national survival.

In fact, our enemies know just how important data centers are to our survival that they are paying digital “influencers” an average of $7,000 for every article they write bashing data centers in America, running as high as $20,000 for a single story. (Read more.)

Share

Meet The Press

 From Tierney's Real News:

President Trump just did what millions of Americans have been dreaming of seeing for years. President Trump stood up, dropped his microphone and crushed it under his feet and then walked out of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker.

He told her that “elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS and CNN.” He was livid, Welker was befuddled and it was glorious!

Excellent! Many people don’t understand why Trump even gives interviews to NBC, and specifically Kristin Welker. Well, first of all NBC News has the highest ratings of all the networks. They reach more people than Fox, Newsmax, CNN and MSNBC combined. That’s reason number one.

Second, Trump worked with NBC for 12 years when he ran the Apprentice so I think he has a soft spot for NBC. I also think Trump believed that he might be able to use Kristin Welker to turn NBC around into the light. I think Trump sincerely liked Kristin Welker because she got married late in life and tried to have a baby late (44) and was infertile and struggling with having a child so she and her husband tried IVF for months and eventually had children using surrogates. She was very open about that and I think Trump cared about her journey.

I’m not saying this to defend her - I’m just telling you that her story pulled at the heartstrings of many Americans - including Trump - and he tried to help her. In return, she screwed him! (Read more.)

Share

14 Common Etiquette Mistakes

 From Good Housekeeping:

We've all had our share of cringeworthy social interactions. While it's common to make a social misstep, it's not a great feeling. We tapped Diane Gottsman, a national etiquette expert, author and speaker to fill us in on the most common etiquette mistakes. She shared that some things you might think are polite, like addressing someone as "ma'am" or putting your pinky up while you're drinking tea, can actually come across as impolite.

Avoiding these etiquette mistakes will help you relax and have a better time next time you're a wedding guest, houseguest, or attending a party.

Using Sir and Ma’am

Many people were raised to respectfully address others as sir and ma’am. Although this was polite to do as children addressing adults, it’s not the best etiquette once we leave childhood, because it can carry connotations of submissiveness or older age.

"As we age, it's much more appropriate to use someone's name," Gottsman explains. If a first-name basis feels too informal, you can address people with their title and last name to show respect.

Clinking Glasses

This is a surprising one! After a toast, you shouldn’t clink glasses. This is because your dinner host may be serving you in their best glassware. You don’t want to spill your drink on their nice linens from thrusting your cup around, and you certainly don’t want to chip or shatter your host’s fine glasses.

If somebody tries to clink with you, you should of course graciously oblige rather than correct or ignore them. But the preferred response to a toast is raising your glass and nodding to your fellow guests, no clinking required. (Read more.)

Share

A Celebration of Motherhood

From Word on Fire:

The trajectory of influencer culture on the small scale that I witnessed with Catholic women looked something like this: First you share your foliage photos with a dress that you have a coupon code for, and then you’re sharing deeply personal information about your family drama (with a link to the lipstick in bio), and when you’ve run out of ways to monetize your story, you peter out a bit. Maybe you begin to work outside of the home or your children age out of wanting to wear matching neutral linen outfits for your photo shoot (ahem, yes, mine have) or your lifestyled home no longer looks photographable, and that is more than okay. Maybe you are writing in a spiral-bound journal with an ink pen to process your own story instead of reaching for the calming, numbing effect of punching it out in a caption and watching the likes and comments flow in. I am speaking truly and firstly about myself here.

Many Catholic women online with audiences of a variety of sizes are demonstrating setting healthy boundaries with their online presence or simply moving off of it altogether. They’re weary of being told how to think, dress, feel, be as a wife, be as a friend, and that if they only buy this course, then they’d know how to be as a daughter of God too. They’re weary of being the content producers packaging up these instructions. They’d like to connect with real, awkward friends in person where one person interrupts the other and the other’s child shouts, “I have a butt!” at their child, and then they all get to practice working through being real people in a real world and all that the incarnation entails. And this means we have a chance at growing into a culture transformed by Christ. The screen is a starting point, but we must jump off to evangelize face-to-face, heart-to-heart, friend-to-friend. Otherwise we live in a fishbowl of one-way mirrors, and nothing is less interesting than the narcissistic navel-gazing promoted by the dopamine hamster wheel that is social media. (Read more.)

Share

The Unsettling Brain Impact of Screen Time in Kids

 From The Vigilant Fox:

Researchers scanned the brains of 60 preschool-aged children—and what they discovered about screens was “truly shocking.”

“Interactive screen time causes a LOSS of white matter in the brain.”

In simple terms, Prof. Mike Nagel calls it a measure of “BRAIN DAMAGE.”

What is white matter?

White matter is the part of the brain made up of insulated nerve fibers that help different areas of the brain communicate quickly and efficiently.

It acts like the brain’s wiring system, carrying signals from one region to another so thinking, movement, emotion, and learning can work smoothly.

“So if we’re seeing deficits in myelin production early in life, we’re probably seeing deficits in neural connectivity,” Prof. Nagel warns.

“The study shows the more screen time a child is exposed to, the greater the loss of white matter.”

But it’s not just loss of white matter we have to worry about. When you understand how screens rewire dopamine in developing brains, the story gets even darker. (Read more.)

 

Outsourcing our children. From Claremont Review of Books:

The culture quickly changed, however, with the arrival of a career-oriented feminist movement. Feminists successfully propagated the message that homemaking and childrearing were second-class endeavors, which prevented women from achieving the personal fulfillment and social status secured by participation in the paid work force. Our society, in particular the media and academia, wholeheartedly endorsed this feminist ideology, and homemakers were consistently disparaged and their social and economic security were fatally undermined by the enactment in all 50 states of no-fault divorce laws that warned mothers it was unsafe to devote themselves to raising children. The result was an unprecedented influx of mothers into the workplace so that, by 1985, the majority of mothers with children under six were working outside the home.

In her wonderfully insightful and eminently sensible book, Mary Eberstadt, a mother of four children who works from home for the Hoover Institution, sets forth evidence of the harm done to children by the maternal exodus responsible for the “Home-Alone America” she rightly deplores. Discussing many facets of children’s lives, she may tell us what we already know, but she analyzes the subject with a fresh insight. She recognizes that her book violates a major taboo today about any discussion of “whether and just how much children need their parents—especially their mothers.” This taboo seeks to protect working mothers from feeling guilty, and Eberstadt sensibly concludes her book by observing that those who “cannot choose otherwise,” such as single parents, “have nothing to feel guilty about.” As for those who do have a choice, perhaps the “continuing complaints about the guilt felt by absent mothers” may be “further proof of a social experiment run amok.”

This social experiment is, of course, the mother-child separation required by the feminist notion that a woman’s personal fulfillment requires her energetic participation in the workplace. Eberstadt calls defenders of this conceit “separationists”: those who believe that women’s freedom to work in the paid marketplace justifies separation from their children, and who refuse to consider whether the children and adolescents left behind by the adult exodus have suffered. She challenges a society, which only seems concerned with making it easier and cheaper for women to “combine work and family,” to consider how small children actually experience being in daycare all day. She makes the very sensible point that the daycare debate is never about what it feels like for the infant and children in day care, but always about what the outcomes are in terms of personality development and cognitive ability. “The daycare proof,” separationists believe, “is in the achievement pudding.” Separationists, however, are often not around children, who, in their lives, have been made “someone else’s problem.” (Read more.)

Share

Getting Kicked Off X

 Oh for that warning voice! From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

 I’ve been kicked off of X.  Last weekend, I got a notice that I was suspended. This was followed by a notice saying I was unsuspended, which was then followed by another notice saying I was suspended, fully this time, and that the matter is closed.  Who did it? The list of suspects could be longer than an Agatha Christie novel. Despite being owned by Elon Musk, X is still vulnerable to censorship. 

        In my view, there are three possibilities.

    Fans of the Washington Post. The Washington Post was decimated last week, with owner Jeff Bezos cutting half of the staff. The destruction was the glorious realization of a lifelong dream of mine, and I was euphoric as I celebrated the demise of this evil institution. Washington Post reporters, like most journalists, are censors. It’s possible they dogpiled me and flooded Elon with complaints. Sally Quinn herself may have dropped the payload.

    Secondly, Hollywood. Or rather, the people in Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry who are not thrilled about my Anti-Communist Film Festival. A piece just ran on Breitbart exploring how the AFI theater in DC strung me along for months, only to reject my request to rent the theater to show The Lives of Others on its 20th anniversary. The Lives of Others is about the East German Stasi, the secret police who played for keeps. It’s possible my X account was sunk by the theater kids in America’s elite institutions. They are the American Stasi.

    Third, Jim VendeHei. When the Washington Post got nuked, VandeHei, a media figure who gave the world both Politico and Axios, was howling bloody murder and offering advice to save the paper. I shared an item I wrote about Jim - in fact, I shared it quite a lot. To everyone. It has some salty language in it. That could have done me in, although a warning would have been nice. (Read more.)

Share

Crackdown in Minneapolis

 From Mr. Snerdley:

A crackdown on protesters in Minneapolis appears to be underway following “good talks” President Donald Trump had with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

The crackdown came as Border Czar Tom Homan was set to arrive in the city amid growing tensions between anti-ICE protesters and federal immigration officials, leading to two deaths in recent weeks.

Trump has characterized the calls as being positive, while reiterating his administration’s demands that the city and state turn over criminal illegal aliens.

It’s unclear whether the calls prompted what appeared to be a crackdown by local law enforcement, clamping down on protesters congregating outside a hotel suspected of housing ICE officials.

However, the Department of Homeland Security posted a video on X showing law enforcement going after “rioters.”

“Local Minnesota Police arrested violent rioters last night. Glad to see some state and local government cooperation. It’s a start,” DHS posted.

Earlier on Monday, the president announced that Walz had reached out to him, requesting the two work together.

In Trump’s Truth Social post Monday announcing Homan’s impending arrival in Minneapolis, the president said the border czar would be reaching out to Walz in an effort to obtain “criminals that they have in their possession.” (Read more.)

Share

The Insurrection Act, Voter Fraud and Venezuela

 

Share

Pathologizing Ourselves

 From What Would Jess Say?:

This industry wants us to think we have mental health issues. The more of us are using the system, the more money they make.

The more acceptable the language becomes, the easier it is for people to identify with it, internalise it, and ultimately adopt psychiatric frameworks voluntarily. Not because the evidence has improved, and not because the science has evolved, but because the vocabulary has been redesigned to feel less threatening, less stigmatising, and more aligned with everyday human experiences.

The end result? Millions of people now describe themselves using psychiatric terminology, often casually, often inaccurately, and often in ways that encourage self-pathologisation. Everything from ‘my depression’ through to ‘I’m a bit psycho.’ Psychiatry wormed its way in, and now everyone is using the language - but let me ask you something?

Would you consider yourself insane? A lunatic? Would you call yourself sick in the head? Are you deranged? Are you abnormal? Disordered?

Or would you prefer to say that you have ‘mental health’?

Mmmhmmm. (Read more.)

 

The limits of expertise. From The Public Discourse:

When speaking with parents about the potential negative effects of social media on youth mental health, it would have been easy to present them with all the same graphs and social scientific studies Haidt shared. For instance, it would be easy to tell them that, on average, more than three hours a day on social media is statistically associated with a higher likelihood of depression among adolescents. This has been empirically demonstrated as more common for girls than boys, and for time spent on platforms such as TikTok (passive reception of videos) as opposed to Reddit (active engagement with words). The former Surgeon General’s advisory on the topic, another touchstone in the movement, is full of such evidence from the social sciences.  

And yet herein lies immense irony. The highly technical collection and sharing of this evidence is predicated on the basic assumption that individual parents are otherwise ill-equipped to discern when their child’s engagement on social media has made them depressed (including the factors—age, sex, content—that make them most depressed). At the most extreme, studies that produce the “three hours” statistic presume parents don’t know their children at all and, further, that they must make decisions for their children based on the outcome of some statistical analysis based on data from kids that, paradoxically, are also unknown to them.  

As I have experienced it, when one talks to actual parents, most (perhaps all) know that their child—this child, the one in front of their eyes daily, the one that they have intimately observed since their birth—is addicted to social media, and that it is bad for their mental health (among other parts of their life). Because it is their child, they know what their behavior and mood were like before they signed up for TikTok, and they can see firsthand the changes to their behavior and mood afterwards. There is no need for statistical controls or sophisticated computational models to help them discern this difference. Jonathan Haidt and company, while helpful, are not required. What is required, rather, is the courage and patience to look.  

Further, from all the focus groups I’ve participated in, discussions about why this is happening to their child and what to do about it are best done with other parents going through the same experiences, as opposed to fully delegating this work to a remote social scientist who has no direct connection with the families reading his work. When these parents I’ve spoken with were allowed to openly discuss what social media were doing to their kids, the basic situation was quickly discerned, and some practical, ground-up solutions were often identified. No “evidence-based recommendations” are needed. Further, the kinds of solutions identified are rarely limited to mere “risk management practices,” (e.g., cut off TikTok after three hours) but tended toward environmental reform—the kinds of practices, policies, and cultural habits that can be changed to reduce the risk of this harm for those vulnerable to otherwise inhabiting a world constantly subjected to it (e.g., several neighborhood groups are bringing back landlines). The best part of any presentation I’ve given was when my presentation on “the evidence” stopped, and discussion between parents and teachers—the messy work of politics—began. I’ve seen it happen many times. (Read more.)

Share

Be Very Careful About Letting AI Take the Place of Humans in Your Life

 From John Hawkins at Culturcidal:

However, you feel about this, from “Oooh, creepy,” to “Wow, I can’t wait,” I would tell you that AI is truly amazing, but you do not want to get emotionally entangled with it in any way, shape, or form.

As a starting point, it’s not human, and therefore, it can’t scratch that itch we all have for companionship like another person. Worse yet, even if you assume that it generally has good “motives” (and we really can’t do that), we’re talking about products here. You know how you sell products and keep your customers coming back for more? You please the consumer by telling them what they want to hear.

AI grandma may tell you that it’s fine that you’re losing your teeth because you’re using meth, but real grandma is probably going to cry and beg you not to do that to yourself. Your AI girlfriend is going to cater to you and what you want all the time, while your real girlfriend is going to be in a bad mood sometimes, wants to go to a restaurant you don’t like, and complains because you have week-old dishes in the sink. AI Jake Paul will probably… well, they both may give terrible advice to their great grandkids, so that may be more of a wash.

Still, the point is that it’s not healthy to be catered to, told what you want to hear, and to live life on easy street ALL THE TIME. So many of the most worthwhile things in life, like relationships, kids, learning, and skill building, require a lot of discomfort, pain, and boredom. The more you lean on AI EMOTIONALLY, the more it’s going to limit your ability to connect with other people and your life. In the short term, it may seem fun, but long term, it will cripple you emotionally. (Read more.)

Share

The Medium is the Message

On disembodiment and the anti-sacrament of violence. From Helen Roy:

I have about four different essays I’ve started and stopped since seeing Charlie Kirk’s throat torn open by a bullet in high definition last week. Every thought, none of them original, feels like quicksand, collapsing into horror and confusion just as soon as I can articulate it. I probably wouldn’t have this sensation if I wasn’t so online, willfully consigning myself to the great suck of the discourse every day, as if it helps make sense of anything.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. Neither is omniscience. I’m clearly still learning to look without staring.

One of the long running themes of this publication is embodiment, which I see as a deeply important yet underexplored principle for living a good life in the digital epoch. Embodiment as I understand it is the state of mind-body connection, a sense of mental presence in time and place, undistracted and unmediated. It is a phenomenological reality, but nevertheless, one that scientists have found ways to measure.

Its flip side, disembodiment, has become the default mode as our lives migrate more and more into the online space. This is the mental deracination I described at the outset: the rush to scroll TikTok when real life bores, the identity-experimentation and cultivation of the self as avatar, the tendency to forget the humanity of users on the other side of the screen, the endless doom scroll, the frictionless spinning in a black hole of information, the feeling of all possible human emotions one after the other without pause, so much feeling, in fact, that you end up feeling nothing at all. As Sam Harris wrote this week:

If the medium is the message, the message is mass psychosis—and it will send us careening from one political emergency to the next. The fact that some of the most deranging and divisive content is being created (or amplified) by foreign adversaries—and that we have literally built and monetized their capacity to do this—beggars belief. We are poisoning ourselves and inviting others to poison us.

(Read more.)

Share

Dark Web

From Tierney's Real News:

I am working on an in-depth report on the awful assassination of Charlie Kirk - but I’m waiting a few more days for the complete story to emerge. In the meantime, you need to know this background as you do your own research.

Tyler Robinson was allegedly called a “Reddit” kid and used several layers of the internet to communicate and he wasn’t acting alone. Why is that important? Today, we can add the “Dark Web” to Satan’s toolbox of tricks - on how our enemies (both foreign and domestic) are able to brainwash and coerce patsies to do unspeakable things.

First, this is an excellent post from Larry Schweikart. I honestly knew nothing about the “Dark Web” before I read this:

1) I had a fascinating talk with my son, who is both in med tech for a big company but also who is a very plugged-in gamer. He is a single male, who knows quite well the inner workings of Reddit and 4Chan. Above all he is up on male culture age 20-40. Tyler was called a Reddit kid.

2) In discussing what radicalized this shooter, who came from a good family and had good grades, he was quick in his response: Reddit and 4 Chan and the Dark Web.

3) Smart kids know how to mask their real activities from their parents. Unless you're snooping in their computer they would be difficult to detect.

4) Me: "The radicalization occurred in probably a year or less."

Him: "Yeah, doesn't take long. He had both alt-right postings but also total left postings, including one people mistake for a transoid symbol but which is actually a deeper, worse nearly demonic symbol that is quite prominent on 4Chan.

5) ME: "Looks like the 71 year old guy [George Zinn] was an accomplice of sorts, or an activated patsy." (Read more.)

Follow the money. Also from Tierney's Real News:

DEVIN NUNES: “Kash Patel, the new Director of the FBI, has so much to clean up - there's so much history here. The radical left in this country have been trying to kill conservatives now for going on eight years.

My colleague, Steve Scalise, and many other conservatives have been gunned down. President Trump was shot at twice, nearly killed. And finally, they got Charlie Kirk.

This violence has to end. It’s the political left doing this. It's nonsense to say it's both sides and we need to lower the “rhetoric.”

The rhetoric was started by my former [Democrat] colleagues in Congress!

It is also done and supported by a very sophisticated organization. Many people say Soros, but it’s not just Soros who helps to organize this. Soros works in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee and other foundations (NGOs) to support these radical groups across the country that has led to this unprecedented historical violence.” (Read more.)

Share

AI Tyranny: Almost Here

 From The Vigilant Fox:

At the Defeat the Mandates rally in Washington DC, RFK Jr. warned quite controversially:

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did…the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide.” AI could make permanent, precision tyranny a reality. There’s no more fleeing and no more hiding when AI is in charge.  One of the last checks on war is soldiers themselves—most people won’t kill other people without deep justification.

But drones and AI-powered robots are erasing that potential restraint. Wars can be fought without consent and without those pulling the trigger being anywhere near the battlefield. AI-powered war feels more like a video game than actual war—at least for those pulling the trigger. On the ground the consequences are more real than ever. And Ukraine may already be the proving ground for this new era. (Read more.)

Share

Reclaiming the Beauty of the Spheres

 From David Bell at Brownstone Institute:

The Tower of Babel was written down in Genesis from ancient oral traditions, but it would be foolish to suggest that it is simply a broken historical narrative of an otherwise forgotten time. Whether Nimrud lived or not, the story was written as much for us today. It tells of powerful fools who convinced themselves, yet again, that they had reached the stage of enlightenment and could finally break out from within the spheres to control them. To do so, they must first empty themselves of humility, of understanding of the human brain within the vastness of the universe, and the ridiculousness of any organic or created being even reaching a place where God, by definition outside of time and space, could be comprehended.

Creating human substitutes with AI is technically clever and somehow deeply pathetic. More so when effort is made to convince us it is better than the real thing. Many will fall for it, as it is an easy path, and in the process, degrade humanity itself. The rise of abuse of humans is not disconnected from the builders of the tower and the creed they sow. It does not require bad intent, just a willingness to empty out the human mind’s ability to converse with the natural world and replace it with a substitute cobbled together by an infinitely inferior creator. (Read more.)

Share

The CCP Might Already Be Spying on You—Right From Your Own Home

 From The Vigilant Fox:

But routers aren’t the only concern. Philipp pointed to Tencent, a Chinese tech and AI giant that has quietly bought up some of the most popular video games on the market, including many that your kids are probably playing.

What’s alarming, he said, is that Tencent runs a mandatory anti-cheat program called “ACE” (Anti Cheat Expert), which installs automatically with their games. You can’t just uninstall it by deleting the game—it stays buried in your device. And unless you know how to dive into the system’s core files, it’s nearly impossible to remove.

He warned that ACE has full access to your computer or phone, including your messages, commands, keyboard inputs, and even your camera. Most users have no idea it’s there.

To make matters worse, the Pentagon recently designated Tencent as a Chinese military company. (Read more.)

Share

The War on Elon Musk

 From Amuse on X:

In politics, as in physics, action begets reaction. Elon Musk’s fifteen-point favorability decline did not happen in a vacuum. According to Nate Silver, Musk’s popularity dropped 14 percent compared to Donald Trump’s 5 percent in the same period. That fact might seem to suggest Musk has become politically radioactive by his own hand. But it is Musk himself who best explains this phenomenon: “The inevitable outcome of having a political propaganda war waged against me while I have almost no countervailing campaign and, at times, digging my own grave way better than my enemies do.” He is half right. He does dig. But the grave was dug long before he arrived with a shovel.

To understand Musk’s collapse in public favor, one must understand the architecture of attack that surrounds him. This architecture is neither spontaneous nor benign. It is not simply a matter of critics online or the backlash of market sentiment. It is the result of a coordinated, well-funded, digitally networked, multi-platform propaganda and protest apparatus that has made Elon Musk the central symbol of the Left’s war on free enterprise, masculinity, decentralization, and dissent.

Musk is not merely a billionaire. He is a billionaire who dared to criticize the cathedral. He mocked sacred cows, opened the gates of Twitter to previously banned accounts, and embraced Donald Trump. He embodies, in one man, too many heresies for the Left to tolerate. That is why he is the subject of a relentless campaign, not simply of criticism, but of coordinated delegitimization. (Read more.)

Share

Top 20 MAHA Accounts You Need to Follow Right Now

 From The Vigilant Fox:

RFK Jr. once said, “American kids did not suddenly get gluttonous and lazy. Something is poisoning them.”

Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma have turned every American into an ATM machine.

Your pain is their profit. But you don’t have to be their victim...

Break the cycle. Follow these 20 𝕏 accounts to uncover what they never wanted you to know about your health.

1.) Dr. Pierre Kory (@PierreKory)

Dr. Pierre Kory was one of the most fearless voices during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing ivermectin into the spotlight and challenging the safety of the shots.

Today, he’s a leading pioneer in treating vaccine injuries—and he’s speaking out about other “forbidden” therapeutics that Big Pharma hopes you never hear about.

2.) A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc)

Speaking of forbidden therapies, @MidwesternDoc is the go-to source for uncovering powerful treatments that were buried when Big Pharma turned medicine into a profit machine. This anonymous writer is one of the most well-researched doctors out there, with insights and references so thorough that it’ll blow your mind. (Read more.)

Share

In Defense of Audiobooks

I am pretty much addicted to audiobooks. From Steam Calliope Scherzos:

If I can try my hand at a bit of mind reading, I would guess that one major reason that the left-liberal contingent of the internet is so strongly pro-audiobook is that they, more than anyone, recognize that there is no Platonic ideal for the act of reading. Many of them are, in fact, forced to recognize this, since they work in academia or at least have graduate degrees in the humanities, and in earning them they have observed that academics are some of the worst book-abusers around. If you spend some time seeing how academics operate, you quickly notice how they go through dozens of books a week during research projects, searching aggressively for some small shred of information and discarding the rest, like a small child who wants to eat the cake frosting while ignoring the actual pastry. Professors don’t really read books so much as rape them. And it’s hard to go through the process of earning an advanced degree without familiarizing yourself with this cavalier attitude that the academics have. You slowly internalize that not all acts of reading are the same.

But once you acknowledge that, you can understand that the kind of reading you engage in should depend on what you’re trying to accomplish with a given text. The professors might take things too far, but they aren’t completely idiotic for accepting that learning is a rough-hewn and imperfect process. Many normal people will refuse to touch dense or obscure writers like Ezra Pound or James Joyce because as soon as they give The Cantos or Ulysses a try, they’ll think, “Oh dear, I’m only one page into this massive thing, and I’m already lost.” But an academic, no matter how ignorant of Joyce or Pound’s wide-ranging liberal arts references, will feel undeterred, opting to plow through the writing no matter how indelicately, until finally he stumbles upon something that resonates with him, at which point he’ll say, “Ah! There we go! I have a quote! I will use this and appear very clever, hee hee hee…” And again, this is all very crass. But nevertheless, there is a touch of wisdom in this approach that most people can benefit from.

There is no “pure” way to read anything, but there are many different kinds, all of which have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Speed reading, for instance, often results in poor comprehension and bad memory retention, but it can be quite useful in some instances, particularly when you’re reading a nonfiction work and you’re only interested in a particular theme or topic within it. It also can be useful when you’ve been excessively slow and deliberate in your reading, trying to look up every unfamiliar word and reference. A good speed-reading once over can give you a feel for a text’s proportionality, its weight, and its sense of direction. The key to speed reading is to always remain conscious of your eye muscles, making sure to engage them as you dart your line of vision back and forth from left to right.

Then, there’s a kind of reading in which you internally enunciate the text to yourself, integrating it with your own internal monologue — reaching a point just shy of having your lips start to move. This makes for a more impactful way to read novels, particularly intricately written ones. When you can tell that an author has really worked on creating a distinct literary voice, one that suggests a well-crafted personality or ethos underpinning it, you should internally vocalize the writing for maximum appreciation. (Read more.)

Share

Endless Recycling

 

From Coffee and Covid:

The Times’ ponderous article spent about six pages warming up to its theme. But, “We are now,” the Times finally explained, “almost a quarter of the way through what looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.”

Least, least, least. Since the printing press.

But why? What, or who, is holding the culture back? Global culture has indeed been stalled, a sociological failure, winning only at participation. You might now begin the whataboutism. What about X? What about Venmo? What about AI? What about Elon’s rocket ships? Stand by. Those gadgets are either part of the problem or exceptions proving the point.

Our modern world is populated by high revision numbers, stratospheric sequel counts, and recycled, geriatric celebrities. We check our iPhone Sixteen —now with three cameras— to find out when Need for Speed Ten starts, and then buy tickets online for an octogenarian Rolling Stones concert. In 2022, the hit Netflix show Stranger Things — a futuristic sci-fi series set back in the 1980’s — and in its season four — featured Kate Bush’s 1985 single Running Up That Hill. The 40-year-old song hit the top 10 in 34 countries.

It’s endless recycling. And it’s not normal.

🔥 There are many examples, but perhaps the most obvious symptom of cultural freeze is stalled fashion. The handful of writers calling out stuck culture focus on how distinct was each decade leading up to the Millennium, right before the Patriot Act passed in 2001. Tracing backwards, the cultural evolution trend holds. But from the 90’s forward, zip. Zero. Nada. (Read more.)

Share

The Revolving Door

 From Amuse on X:

In the past decade, a peculiar phenomenon has emerged, blending the power of unelected bureaucracies with the unparalleled influence of Big Tech companies. Google, Meta, Twitter, and even OpenAI now operate as soft extensions of the federal government, employing hundreds of former FBI, CIA, DOJ, and DHS officials. These figures, long familiar with surveillance and information control, have seamlessly transitioned into roles dictating content moderation, security policy, and even artificial intelligence ethics. This phenomenon, which mushroomed during the Biden administration, reveals a disturbing reality: the government’s ability to outsource censorship to private entities, effectively sidestepping constitutional constraints.

A quick LinkedIn search reveals that hundreds of former federal employees, many from surveillance and justice agencies, have taken key roles at Big Tech companies. Google alone absorbed 130 former DOJ, FBI, and CIA officials. Meta followed suit, hiring 47 ex-government operatives for politically sensitive positions in trust and safety, security, and content moderation. TikTok, despite its Chinese ownership, employed 25 former U.S. intelligence officials, while Twitter (pre-Elon Musk) had 46 former FBI employees, many of whom held significant positions.

The stories behind these hires underscore the tight integration between government and tech. James Baker, the former FBI general counsel who played a controversial role in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, became Twitter’s deputy general counsel, where he oversaw legal and policy decisions, including those related to content moderation. Aaron Berman, a CIA veteran, now manages misinformation policy at Meta, influencing decisions on what content is allowed to circulate. OpenAI has followed suit, hiring Paul Nakasone, the former Director of the National Security Agency, to advise on security and policy issues, ensuring government-aligned priorities shape AI development. These individuals are not mere advisors; they hold significant sway over policies that directly shape the flow of information and public discourse, as evidenced by their roles in suppressing key stories such as the Hunter Biden laptop controversy and moderating pandemic-related dissent. Their embedded presence within corporate hierarchies demonstrates how deeply government-aligned priorities can permeate private platforms. (Read more.)

Trump and the New World. From Armas:

Friends, it’s a new year and a new episode of The Hard Country, in which we discuss the extraordinary actions — against the trafficking cartels, and especially against their allies in the Mexican state — undertaken in the first week of the new Administration of President Donald J. Trump. The odious Vladimir Lenin once quipped that there were decades in which nothing happened, and weeks in which decades happened — and the new White House has given us an example of the latter. Settle in and have a listen on what’s changed, and why we may allow ourselves a sentiment on the border and the Western Hemisphere that has been in short supply for many years: Hope. (Read more.)

 

Fantasy ideology. Because living in a make-believe world has consequences. From Jennifer Roback Morse:

Let’s give this problem a name: Fantasy Ideology. The purpose of a Fantasy Ideology is NOT to solve a problem. It is to help the partisans accumulate more power.

The process works like this.

Creating a Dystopia, in Five Easy Steps

Step 1. Sell the public on the utopian ideal of completely eliminating an Intolerable Problem. (Climate change. Systematic racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Injustice to transgender people. COVID. Take your pick, the possibilities are endless.) Catastrophize the Intolerable Problem. Demand nothing less than its complete elimination.

To be clear, even good ideas and noble goals can be transformed into utopian impossibilities. For instance, we can eliminate some inequality, but we will never have perfect equality in every dimension. That’s completely impossible. Human beings are irreducibly different from each other.

For instance, some environmentalists want to eliminate all pollution, all carbon footprints. That’s not possible. Can we reduce pollution? Sure. But eliminate it? No.

Some in the public health establishment insist on trying to eliminate all cases of COVID. Can we reduce the number of cases? Sure. But eliminate them all? No.

But these ideas must never spoken aloud, because realistic obtainable goals do not serve the purpose of accumulating power.

Step 2: Sell yourself and your ideological buddies as the potential Savior Class who can make this dream a reality, if only

Step 3: You have enough power. Doing the impossible requires a lot of power. Thus, the Savior Class requires unlimited power to bring about the Fantasy. But even with lots of power, you can’t really do the impossible. So, you must fill the society with

Step 4: Unlimited propaganda. The propaganda keeps people convinced that the Fantasy is possible and desirable. It diverts attention from the problems and costs associated with trying to do the undoable. Finally — and very importantly — the propaganda must divert the attention of ordinary people away from the failure of the Fantasy and toward the

Step 5: Scapegoat Class. The Fantasy will never materialize, even with massive amounts of power and propaganda. So the self-appointed Savior Class needs someone to blame.

Every totalitarian ideology you can think of has had a Scapegoat Class. The Communists had their kulaks and rich peasants. The Nazis had their Jews. Today’s Ruling Class has its “basket of deplorables,” the unwashed, embittered “garbage” people who “cling to their guns and their religion.” (Read more.)

Share