Linkstorm XIV

Beautiful post by Sonya (supposedly), on the People of the Past: “(…) We ought to romanticize the past, and the people who made it. Ought is superfluous, though — it’s not like we can resist the urge. (…)”

Geoff Shullenberger from Outsider Theory provides outstanding intel on the intellectuals of Trumpism: “(…) The “long march through the institutions” undertaken by 60s radicals ended up not with the liberation of those institutions but with the integration of pseudo-liberationist ideologies into the worldview that sustains them. (…)”

Three stories of last week’s Happening by Curtis Yarvin: (…) I think something beautiful, actually, has happened. The world has clarified itself. Though not in a way that anyone believes, or will soon believe, it has taken a genuine step into the mind of its own future, and the future of its own mind. (…)”

A few thoughts on the Presidency by EvolutionistX: “(…) For these four years America has been essentially sans-president. (…)”

An audiovisual sample of Covidian Aesthetics by Mónica Belevan and Charles Curran: “(…) There are real limits, I believe ―acceleration and velocity foremost among them― to what can be accurately conveyed in writing about a world-historical shift of this magnitude and nature in real time. (…)”

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Linkstorm XII

A mission statement from friendly blog Type Studies: “(…) a research project that explores models on life and their similarities. It focuses on types, exemplary generalizations that sacrifice precision for explanatory power (…)”

Curtis Yarvin’s sequel to Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth: “(…) The heart of modern international law is the right of the international community, which just happens to be shaped rather like the 200-year-old Anglo-American empire, to distinguish between ethical and unethical war, and use the former to stop the latter. (…)”

Great video account of English Civil War factions by Justine Brown: “(…) story of the splintering of the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War (or Wars of the Three Kingdoms) through the figure of General Thomas Fairfax. (…)”

Some takes on Futurist dining: “(…) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the father of Futurism and a dedicated provocateur, would be crestfallen to discover how closely his most incendiary gastronomical pronouncement aligns with the views of today’s low-carb crusaders. (…)”

Anti-drone drones, from Russia, with love: “(…) Russia is developing a helicopter drone to assist anti-aircraft weapon systems in their counter-UAV mission. The project, accelerated shortly after the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan began in mid-2020, will fill a gap in Russia’s military capabilities.(…)”

Linkstorm XI

Easy Answers, from Real Life mag: “(…) doctors’ ability to easily look up medical information causes overconfidence that leads to misdiagnoses. “Self-questioning,” the authors write, “morphs from ‘What do I know?’ to ‘Where can I find it?’”

Vae victis at Gray Mirror: “(…) With Trump as his instrument, God has taught us beyond any doubt that, fucked as America may be, fucked as America is, we still have a market for dreams. (…)”

Notes on Anon Twitter, at Quartal Harmonies: “(…) The half-world is composed of people who know each other and take pleasure in knowing each other. The fully anon demimonde is ashamed that they have no real social connections to the people they think are cool online. (…)”

On Spelling, by dear friend Sonya Mann: “(…) When you habitually think in certain ways, dwell on certain topics, that changes your brain. Physically — “neural pathways” or whatever the correct jargon may be. Repeatedly evoking gratitude in yourself carves grooves of goodness through your cognition. (…)”

Bonus war anecdote via Isegoria: “(…) “(…)no war was complete unless a little fun could be had out of it(…)” (…)”

Linkstorm X

Thought-provoking article by Counter-engineer, Starships of future past: “(…) Here’s the thing: we couldn’t get this starship in the air and then figure out how to make it run well, no. We first constructed starships on Earth, socities that lasted long enough to propel themselves off.(…)”

Some theories and a history of QAnon, with parts 1 and 2: “(…) In other situations, Trump’s base might have protested and demonstrated against the judicial storm that was about to hit their leader. Instead, a small but significant part of that base had spent the last year raving about pedophiles and satanic dinners. (…)”

Parts 9 and 10 of J. Simpkin’s great Necroethics series are finally out: “(…)Fundamentally, removing the human body from the theatre of conflict reduces the cost of warfare to the state in terms of human life, thereby also undermining the power of anti-war protesters to make protest based on the risk presented to that life. This tendency is then compounded by the nature of the modern liberal state, which in trying to protect its citizens from harm has a natural fealty towards mechanised warfare, and ultimately totally autonomous drone warfare. (…)”

Former terrorist-hunter Andrew Knapp is making interesting developments in neofeudalist political theory: “(…) as someone who believes in the value of classical Western civilization as an explicit product of evolution, I think we can put together basic theory of politics that is a counter to the rotten orthodoxies of critical theory and liberal internationalism, while also rejecting ethnonationalist systems of thought. (…)”

On Bernie Sanders defending the Deep State, by Glenn Greenwald: “(…) It’s somewhat difficult to understand how one can wage a “revolution” against the political establishment while delegitmizing the obviously true claim that establishment news outlets disseminate fake news against establishment enemies. (…)”

Linkstorm IX

Fantastic article by Geoff Shullenberger at “Outside Theory”: “(…) Metamodernism, as it was originally defined, embodied a search for earnest, even naïve, conviction amidst the fragmented cultural sphere of mediatized hypercapitalism that had incubated postmodern irony. The Trump presidency permitted liberals to imagine themselves as insurgents against fascist totalitarianism and to recast partisan politics as a Cold War spy thriller. (…)”

A story of the division in America, through Ken McAloon’s “Newtonian politics” series: “(…) The Age of Industrial Capitalism was giving way to the Age of Financial Capitalism. Big Industry was yielding to Big Capital. And the 1980s and 1990s would see the country fracture along new fault lines. To the Newtonian pattern of action/reaction would be added a new process of division from the top down. (…)”

From type studies, another installment on theories of generational type: “(…) Indeed, it is the generation in their youth who are best able to perceive the shadow and shortcomings of their the generation that raises them, who are themselves reacting to the shadow of their parents in late elderhood, forming an oppositional dynamic between familial lineage and peer cohort generations.”

A story on University’s nature as a mystic body: “(…) As a corpus mysticum, the university is a corporation in a different sense than the modern business enterprise. Because students and professors were the embodied corpus mysticum, regents or janitors, for instance, do not themselves belong to the university proper. They are attached outsiders.”

From Aeon, on the science of peripersonal space, and exaptation: “(…) While an adaptation is a new trait that was selected for the way it improved an organism’s fitness, exaptations retool existing useful structures for new purposes. A classic example of exaptation concerns the role of feathers in birds, which would have been originally selected due to their role in thermoregulation and only later co-opted for flight. (…)”

Linkstorm VIII

A new public post by Moldbug: (…) Protocol transparency means banning secret Internet protocols, at least for monopolies. Governments can tame the platform dragons—tame, not slay, though they will squeal as if being slain—by compelling them to use only free, published network protocols. (…)

Woke religion is hindering space exploration, according to the National Review: “(…) The idea that after half a century without a life-detection mission being sent to Mars, NASA should spend billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money and a decade’s worth of the efforts of a talented team of scientists and engineers to create one, only to send it to a place where it is least likely to find life, is patently absurd. Yet this is what the planetary-protection program has reduced us to.(…)”

Apparently, lockdowns do not prevent traffic accident deaths: “(…) traffic fatality rates increased 30% in the second quarter as evidence suggests drivers engaged in more risky behavior (…)”

A history of gout: “(…) Writing of the romantic aura of tuberculosis in the 19th century, Sontag argues that, metaphorically, gout was TB’s antithesis: The gout-ridden were guilty of consuming too much, while those dying of TB were themselves consumed, eaten away from the inside (thus the disease’s popular name, consumption). (…)”

James Simpkin’s Necro-Ethics series has provided another excellent installment: “(…) the ability of the state or sovereign to wage war is still grounded in the bodies of the populace it deploys onto the battlefield. Historically, this gave the people a certain power against the sovereign in times of war, for, as Chamayou argues: ‘if power is embedded in our bodies, we can always refuse to offer them’. However, the advent of drone warfare undermines this power (…)”

Linkstorm VII

From J. Simpkin’s new installment of his Necro-Ethics series on drone warfare: “(…) with the advent of the drone the temptations of a technological fix raised its head once more. This time around, the precision strike capability drones supposedly possessed would ensure kills without casualties. Strategists were also seduced by the apparent opportunity drone warfare presented for flipping the script of insurgents’ asymmetric tactics back on them by ‘depriving the enemy of an enemy’ (…)”.

Finally, a new and long-awaited article from Jacobite Magazine, this time by Nicholas Hausdorf: “(…) The nation grows from the network, the large space turns network again.(…)”.

On historical and generational cycles, from type studies: “(…) For early humans, this cosmic order of time and generation was inevitably, periodically disrupted by catastrophic events that would create an indelible imprint on all those who live through it, leading to the emergence of a distinct cohort generation, “but there seemed little need to insist on a rigorous definition. As time passed on, so too would ‘that generation,’ and then all would be as before.” (…)“

From Real Life Magazine, Decision Trees: “(…) because no place is spared from human activity, whether in the form of climate change or the spread of invasive species, undoing human effects will require more intervention in a landscape, not less. In this vision, machinic sensing systems monitor changes in a landscape, cross-reference them with predictive models of the near future, and administer a response they deem appropriate using the technical prostheses of drones and other robots. (…)”

On the shape of hand grenades, by way of Isegoria: “(…) It always seemed to me that a hand grenade should be the size and weight of a baseball, since most (American) soldiers have — or used to have — a lot of experience throwing baseballs, but I assumed the size and weight wouldn’t work. (…)”

On voting, by Speculum Criticum: “(…) do not put your faith in an “engaged citizenry,” especially if you are a part of it, unless you know what is making them (and yourself) engaged, and in what spirit (…)”

Linkstorm VI

Some funny mathematical jokes on Big Game Hunting: “(…) We place a spherical cage in the desert, enter it, and lock it. We perform an inversion with respect to the cage. The lion is then in the interior of the cage, and we are outside.(…)”

The Other Life Course on Leo Strauss, with Michael Millerman (PhD), has been already announced (and provided a reading list): “(…) An 8-week masterclass on the mysterious and highly influential German Jewish political theorist. Very few understand the ideas of Leo Strauss, yet he’s influenced everyone from tech elites like Peter Thiel, to high-ranking American politicos such as Paul Wolfowitz, to internet phenoms like Bronze Age Pervert. (…)”

Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug’s take on the election: “(…) Though I did not put this in writing, not from responsibility but just out of cowardice, I did go around telling people IRL that my preferred outcome was “it looks like Trump wins, then it looks like Biden steals it from him.” [Note: not to brag, but we predicted this here a few hours in advance]

A British Columbia University PhD dissertation on floating cities (don’t be afraid, there’s lots of cool pictures and you don’t need to read the whole thing): “(…) The use of a floating house or an amphibious house can now be seen in various cities across the planet. These houses are attached to the shoreline and can easily adapt to the sea-level change. Although this idea is not entirely new, for some reason a floating city has not yet been successful. Various designs have been presented at different times but so far, no design has succeeded. (…)”

Our friend Tundranaut keeping it short and simple: “(…) America is not a young land (…).”

Linkstorm V

Geoff Shullenberger’s new article for The New Atlantis, on predictions for the election: “(…) When reality and a model of that reality appear to be mismatched, in other words, we may discard the model, or we may discard reality. (…)”

James’ Simpkin’s new Medium article in his series about drone warfare and Necro-Ethics (read the whole thing): “(…) Possibly it is easier to harm a person when he is unable to observe our actions than when he can see what we are doing.’ (p.118). The drone pilot does not experience the pain and terror, shame and embarrassment of the victim; doesn’t have to look into the victim’s eyes. (…)”

Mexican zapatist guerrillas aren’t having López Obrador’s grievance politics: “(…) ‘Neither the Spanish State nor the Catholic Church have to ask us for forgiveness for anything. We will not echo the fakers who ride on our blood and thus hide that their hands are stained with it’ (…)“

Techno-utopian discourses regarding blockchain in the Pacific (via Emmet Penney’s excellent podcast Ex.haust): “(…) Decentralised control bypasses democracy or sovereignty, and this has the potential to shift power within a country and place all manner of market transactions outside regulation. (…)”

Linkstorm IV

How Big Tech seduced the Left, by Geoff Shullenberger: “(…) Information technology does not enable either freedom or control: it facilitates both at once. Because they did not recognise this dual potentiality in 1964, Savio and his fellow activists could not foresee that that the insertion of human beings into technological systems would not be imposed by faceless, repressive power structures. (…)”

Principles of Coronademonology at Urbanomic: “(…) Challenged to imagine the virus as a demon, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, author of Omnicide, sets out eleven brief principles of demonic entities. (…).”

From New Discourses, the Great Silencing of America: “(…) We are in the midst of a Great Silencing, the quashing of all voices from both our present and our past. Liberal democratic America saw both communists and fascists, and many cult-like enterprises large and small, but never did any of them become so powerful as to so completely strangle the public discourse, or to so credibly demand absolute obedience to its core tenets from the entire mass populace, with such totality, as the ideology today known as Wokeness. (…).”

From The American Conservative, a new article by Rod Dreher (of Benedict Option fame): “(…) Has anything like this ever happened to any society, ever? Three out of ten women under the age of 25 consider themselves to be gay or transgender. Five percent, sure. Maybe even eight percent. But thirty? Will they always think that? Maybe not, but these are their prime childbearing years. (…).”

A somewhat macabre article about books bound in human skin: “(…) Paris seems to have been where the phenomenon took hold. One of the legends persistently recycled in anthropodermic histories is that during the French revolutionary terror in 1793–1794, bodies were taken from the guillotine to a human-skin tannery set up outside the city at a former royal castle, the Château de Meudon. Republican generals, it was said, paraded in human skin culottes, and guests at a revolutionary ball held in a cemetery were presented with anthropodermic copies of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. (…).”

Great content as usual from Real Life Mag: “(…) But digital infrastructure has hybridized with physical infrastructure, administering (for instance) access to and maintenance of water, transportation, and health care systems. The walls are now coming from inside the phone: Platforms that started “online” have extended their tendrils into our cars, homes, workplaces, schools, and streets. Physical walls, doors, and vehicles are increasingly being governed by obscure algorithms and platform business models. (…).”

Via Defense One, US Army trained soldier coders: “(…) Improving on Wednesday’s performance will require more people writing and analyzing code and data in real-time, closer to the action — and that’s not just for the experiment. One of the biggest changes the Army envisions for the way it fights is bringing a new type of soldier, trained in software development, data science and AI, to work and rework algorithms on, or very near, the front lines.(…).”