linkstorm – The Outpost

Linkstorm XXV

Planetocracy, a recent discovery, on nuclear fusion and solar system economies: “(…) Going back to my original argument – the large scale behaviour of an extraterrestrial civilisation, as seen from a distance, will be governed by the ergovore i.e. by its fasting growing component, and as explained above solar will always be a faster growing component than fusion. (…)”

Another recent cool discovery, on robotics and linguistics: (…) As a case point very relevant to ideas of robotics and control, there are languages that do not have ways of expressing ideas in local coordinates. Speakers of Guugu Yimithirr only can express locations and events in the context of global coordinates: North, south, east, and west.(…)”

Sonya (supposedly)’s latest installment is as evocative as usual; it’s full of cool links aswell: “(…) Even if I could have known in advance how much I’d change, we’d all end up in the same places, saying the same lines. (…)”

Some #realtalk from Real Life Mag: “(…) Choices in life become “gambles,” as one scrambles to find bits of work or the big payout that would allow one to escape the condition of alienated work altogether, and our knowledge and skills become like assets that we must plan to increase the value of and deploy for high returns as performance in this arena is individualized.(…)”

Good stuff to now about Bayraktar Diplomacy in the reignited Afghan scenario: “(…) Based around small-footprint interventions that seek to maximise both political and military impact at low financial and humanitarian cost, Bayraktar Diplomacy essentially constitutes a new type of warfare that is uniquely suited to the characteristics of modern-day conflicts. (…)”

Linkstorm XXIII

Great stuff from Covidian Aesthetics, as always: “(…) Thus is why memes, in the Spinozian sense, are the virus of the attribute of thought; in the same way that real viruses are material contagion for the attribute of extension. (…)”

Niccolo Soldo interviewed Curtis Yarvin last week, possibly at a secluded, secret outpost in Agrigento, Sicily: “(…) People think the Empire is young and has just been born because they are used to all the heinous ways it has violated them in the past. When the GAE starts to penetrate them in some new orifice they are briefly shocked and revolted, but they take the saggy, worked-over state of all their other holes for granted. (…)”

Interesting article on Chinese mercenaries in Africa: “(…) China wishes to maintain a discreet military presence in Africa and avoid at all costs being seen as a new colonial power. The PSCs may be the tool it needs to prevent the defense of its citizens and assets from forcing it into military interventions that, for the time being, remain out of its reach. But it is to be feared that the increase in military aid and private security may lead Beijing to move away from its principle of non-interference. (…)”

Always interesting pearls of knowledge from Isegoria: “(…) I was reading Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution, when the tech billionaire advising the White House asked our protagonist, “Are you familiar with John Gardner?” (…)”

Tundranaut provides this fascinating insight on unplaces: “(…) Kalder contemplates a lost work where he documents America’s parking lots. Not high-drama parking lots with drug deals, gangs, and lost souls who huff solvents, but places “where people left their vehicles behind” in order to “experience somewhere else.” In other words, unplaces, and “transitional zones of nothingness” that constitute neglected corners of the urban landscape… (…)”

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Linkstorm XXII

Here you can find two (1,2) cool book reviews by EvolutionistX, about the fascinating topic of German-Ottoman collaboration during the Great War: ” (…) With the war finished on the Western Front, the remaining British and French forces so outweighed the small Arab force that they more or less dictated the terms of the settlements with the Ottomans. The Arab troops were helpful for distracting and worrying Turkish troops during the war, but once the fighting was over, their utility was spent. (…) “

Those interested in philosophy should check out James Simpkin’s articles, such as this one: ” (…) Instead, coupling negative capability with Nietzsche’s perspectivism allows Nietzsche’s nihilism to be conceived of as his artistic leitmotif, his jumping off point for his artistic-philosophical project without it actually having to be a statement of fact. (…) “

Beautiful thoughts expressed in Eternal Agriculture by Counterengineer: “(…) The foundation of the Eternal City is the family farm. (…)”

Niccolo Soldo’s Dubrovnik interviews, like this one to Mike Cernovich, are as hilarious as the Kinshasa series: (…) Those who begin revolutions rarely end them. Usually those on the vanguard are executed or exhausted, then the managerial class steps in. (…) Men in general should stop watching mafia movies. Life isn’t Goodfellas or Scarface, and you’re not Don Corleone. (…) “

Justin Murphy presents the bullish case for Urbit, an innovation we have been curious about for some time: “(…) I went through all the objections on Hacker News and many of them boil down to “So it’s just a glorified personal server?” or “You can already do this with X, Y, or Z.” I would reject all objections of this type because what’s crucial is not particular technical affordances but a system that can link technical affordances and a brand that can channel collective social energy into a network effect. (…)”

Linkstorm XXI

A remarkable blog post on the meaning of life: “(…) The stories of our heroes select for meaning – for the kinds of stories that scratch a certain human itch. They project a narrative simplicity backwards onto lives full of false leads, crises and dead ends. They gloss over long periods of despair, the noise of randomness, the elements of chance, and personal and moral failings to tell the story of someone special who carried out a special mission. (…)”

Isegoria, on why there are no biographies of Xi Jinping: “(…) Many people fell for the delusion that China was nominally Communist but sliding inexorably toward greater freedom. (…)”

The case for US Civil Affairs-led Special Operations in Africa: “(…) In the scope of Great Power Competition, SOTF-NWA competes in the under-governed spaces of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger as a part of United States Government efforts to protect our nation’s influence and interests in the face of aggressive expansion by competing nations. (…)”

Cool African story to stick with this week’s apparent theme: “(…) on the 6th of November the two Su-25UBs bombed and rocketed a clearly marked French peacekeeper camp in Bouaké. The resulting tragedy claimed the lives of nine French soldiers and one American missionary, with dozens more soldiers injured. Then, in what can only be described as an act of sheer lunacy, the mixed Belarusian-Ivorian crew of the Sukhois returned to Yamoussoukro airport, which they now happened to share with a very angry bunch of French paratroopers (…)”

An exciting exoskeleton project for ski touring: “(…) We tend to think of wearable robotic devices as complex machines that work best in controlled environments. A snow-covered mountain is hardly the environment one imagines for this technology. The striking imagery pushes the envelope on the potential applications for exoskeletons. (…)”

Linkstorm XX

Following the money that funds our Brave New World: “(…) What the bankers and giant investment funds like BlackRock have done is to create a new investment infrastructure that picks “winners” or “losers” for investment according to how serious that company is about ESG—Environment, Social values and Governance. For example a company gets positive ratings for the seriousness of its hiring gender diverse management and employees, or takes measures to eliminate their carbon “footprint” by making their energy sources green or sustainable to use the UN term. (…)”

On the ubiquity of American Special Forces: “(…) The advent of nuclear weapons, in the 1940s, presented leaders with urgent ethical and strategic imperatives. Defining the purpose of such weapons automatically demanded fresh thinking about the bedrock values of a democracy, the nature of multilateral alliances, the morality of warfare, and the scope of U.S. ambitions in the world. Because of its sub-rosa nature, Special Ops has not compelled the same kind of reckoning—and, in fact, may foster the illusion that a strategic framework is not necessary. (…)”

We somehow missed this great month-old post at Violence Cafe: “(…) The anonymous image-board takes this a step further as identity wholly ceases to be a factor, and mass communication happens at previously unthinkable speeds. Marshall McLuhan’s‘the medium is the message’ is particularly applicable in such a space: Where all voices are equal and constantly vying for attention, the primary incentives are to impress or transgress: sexually, violently, intellectually— ideally a combination of the three (…)”

On Intersectional Imperialism, by Alex Rubinstein: “(…) Glorification of the conquests by Kurdish forces in Syria reached a fever pitch during the Raqqa campaign. One group was established, which now has its own Wikipedia page despite it’s actual existence being dubious, by foreign queer anarchists called the “The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army.” While the historic city of Raqqa was being destroyed to the tune of 70 percent, these feel-good headlines about a supposedly revolutionary and inclusive alternative to statism that the Kurdish fighters and their allies represented dominated the narrative on the left. (…)”

Niccolo Soldo’s African interviews are always hilarious, including this one to Christopher Rufo: “(…) Christopher Rufo is one of these modern outlaws. Initally a documentary maker, his life recently has taken him down another, much more difficult route: challenging the intellectual basis of today’s American elites, that being Critical Race Theory. He has been credited with singlehandedly putting opposition to this trend on the political map by way of influencing President Trump to issue an Executive Order halting its instruction inside of federal agencies. (…)”

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Linkstorm XIX

Our source for astrological wisdom, type studies, offers a much-awaited new dispatch: “(…) Two centuries on, the God-shaped hole that the Enlightenment shot through the heart of the West remains unfilled; neither totalizing ideologies nor endless circuses and bread will suffice. As our decadence may not only portend another Great War but also a cataclysmic Fall, concerted efforts to break through this ‘meaning crisis’ are bubbling in digital cauldrons outside the mainstream, coalescing into two general approaches (…)”

More about Counterengineer’s Tradhumanist Research Program: “(…) Tradition is not a mere revival of the past, it is the eternal practice of the just and the right. What we wish for is the ability to continually construct a virtuous society. (…)”

EvolutionistX brings some light, wholesome, much longed for Spring vibes: “(…) Nettles are famous because they’re one of the very first wild plants available in spring and are available almost everywhere. (…)”

From dear friend Tundranaut: “(…) micro-cosmologies (…) esoteric topographies (…) ExoDelirium (…)”

Contrarian statistician William M. Briggs talks about meat: “(…) You can do the math. Works out that tons of impalas, antelope, baboons and more are butchered annually. A lot of pain, a lot of blood. But many happy leopards, too. (…)”

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Linkstorm XVIII

Fascinating advances in wearable robotics: “(…) The model devised by the researchers is inspired by the mechanisms underpinning the movements of grasshoppers. A simple anatomical experiment, however, revealed that it also effectively replicates the way in which crabs and lobsters move their limbs, which suggests that it reflects the physical structure of most arthropods. (…)”

Verticalist makes it again into this week’s list with a some notes on Luxury Communism: “(…) Here we see that data follows the logic of capital inherently, comprising of limitless sets of flows rather than a definable, strict teleology. Without narrative, without history, we lose the human quality of life and render all activity inhuman and fundamentally dislocated from human (discursive, narrative) control. (…)”

Some esoteric stuff about the North Pole, from a recently discovered cool blog: “(…) The North Pole then represents Paradise, the original home of all, to which we pray to return. (…)”

In defense of miasma theory, by way of Isegoria (plus a bonus funny anecdote): “(…) In our quest for perfect solutions to the current pandemic, we’d forgotten an extremely obvious and simple one — fresh air (…)”

On tradhumanism, by Counterengineer: “(…) The transhumanist would have you believe that all is machine, but clearly a machine is an artifact in the same vein as a hammer. A machine does not have an inherent end to it in the way living substances have. Rather, the machines direction–or equivalently, its form–can only be understood in the context of a human operating it.(…)”

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Linkstorm XVII

The great Justin Murphy shares some interesting predictions: “(…)Lind suggests that any new cross-class alliance will have to create “powerful mass-membership, working-class organizations…” I do not think this needs to happen, and I do not think it will happen. This is a powerful meme from pre-digital labor history, but I don’t think it bears much scrutiny. It’s the kind of thing Gen X socialists say when they don’t know what else to say. (…)”

EvolutionistX commenting on Bad Content vs. Good: “(…) Ask anyone who’s ever lived in a “planned society”: actually getting societies to work and be good, pleasant places to live in is difficult. Just look at the issues people had in the Soviet Union, the city of Brasilia, or any cult. (…)”

Joseph DeFranco at DefenseIQ has some thoughts on biowarfare and drones: “(…) A recent article in the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese gangs are using drones to spread African swine fever in pig populations, infecting and subsequently killing several herds (…)”

Peter Limberg on Culture War Battlefronts: “(…) A memetic tribe—a term I coined with Conor Barnes—is a group of agents (humans, bots, institutions, etc) that replicate “memes” in a way that engender a verisimilitude of tribalism amongst a group of people. (…) These tribes share a meme complex, or memeplex, which is a constellation of memes. (…)”

A great discovery from this week, Verticalist’s Notes on Mammon: “(…) The end of history and the creation of a Universal and Homogenous State is the return of man to given animal being through his overcoming all potential restraints to freedom — closing the circle of time indefinitely, achieving given animal homo-sapien simplicity through total complexification — imagine a beetle going to the opera. (…)”

Linkstorm XVI

Doxometrist is a very exciting recent discovery: “(…) If you find any of the questions new and thought – provoking, you’ve just been vaccinated. Vaccinated against being told about the topic by someone manipulative. Or against being surprised by a question on your stance on that. (…)”

Short poem titled “Armada of the gulf“, via Logos Literature: “(…) Triumph sings the piston, / vengeful spins the gear. / Grand, the ship emerges, / glory!—fair the cheer. (…)”

Curtis Yarvin’s Gray Mirror, always returnins a hi-fi image: (…) Fact: the proles are the victims here. The perpetrator is Big Tech—which has marketing profiles on all their customers, has algos that can smell a prole in three clicks, and, if it wasn’t too busy making money by promoting violence, could easily block all proletarian access to complex, inflammatory, easily-misunderstood stories (…)”

Isegoria pointing to the right stuff for you: “(…) When the Korean War began, T. R. Fehrenbach explains (in This Kind of War), the United States had no experience handling hostile prisoners of war (…)”

Geoff Shullenberger offers a very interesting course on René Girard: “(…) The interdisciplinary theorist René Girard’s work traces the sources of human conflict to the tendency to imitate, and identifies scapegoating as a fundamental means of social pacification. (…)”

BONUS TRACK (in Spanish), from the recently-opened blog Interferencia: “(…) ese europeo que “ha perdido la raíz de su heroico idealismo” y lo ha cambiado por “la ciega servidumbre a la realidad más aparente e inmediata” ya tiene un nombre y ya había existido unas pocas décadas atrás: es el sujeto propiamente totalitario. (…)”

Linkstorm XV

Vincent Garton published this a year ago , but it reached our gates just now: “(…) Empire, in fact, precedes the modern nation-state not just historically but also logically, and the sovereign states of the contemporary world are comprehensible only as moving parts of the single world empire that triumphed in this colonial struggle: namely, the American empire, whose defeat of the Soviet project in the Cold War represented the victory of a particular maritime, commercial model of world empire over a land-based, spiritual-ethical alternative. This world empire now includes China itself: “China and Russia,” too, “are situated within the American-led system.” No country can exist outside it: they can only rebel against the empire from within. (…)”

Niccolo Soldo’s interview of Alex Kaschuta was equally hilarious and quotable: “(…) Old age is useless in a culture that believes wisdom is reactionary. (…)”

EvolutionistX, as usual, is being correct in this: “(…) To be clear, just because something is a conspiracy doesn’t make it wrong. People have conspired in the past; people will conspire in the future. Sometimes there genuinely is something going on. (…)”

From Isegoria, inexhaustible fountain of references: “(…) The current hysteria over “domestic terrorists” is often compared to incidents in Nazi Germany, Steve Sailer notes, but a better analog might be the Wilson administration’s demonization of German-Americans in 1917 (…)”.

Parallax Optics compares three Neoreactionary OG’s, and shares The Outpost’s scepticism on decentralized insurrectionism: “(…) Troosters boast of the anti-fragile, distributed network of anti-Woke system resistance they represent / embody. But in reality – minus their actually competent fed infiltration component – they are a serum of disorganised conspiracy theorists / Larpers injected into an extraneous faction of Trump’s Boomer / Maga base. (…)”

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