Felix: Back in those days, it struck me that the reason the Soviet Union was going down the tubes is, well, because anyone not totally blind saw it was already down the tubes and waving “bye” to a receding, functioning world. “Anyone” included Soviet diplomats, movers, and shakers. And they so so wanted to appear to their international peers to be something other than pathetic, sad-sack losers. And they knew they would be a charity case so long as they kept living in their dream...
Wilson: It is funny when they pretend to impartially fight against book banning when someone tries to stop them from distributing deviant porn to kids, though nothing was actually banned and their library only has a small selection of handpicked books
Bob Sykes: I have yet to read or hear a convincing explanation of why the USSR ultimately failed, including this one. Apparently, Gorbachev remained a believer in Marxism, but Yeltsin didn’t. In the modern, democratic Russian Federation, there is a small, active Communist Party, but it has no power. Putin, Medvedev and other Russian leaders are nationalists, and they lead a modern mixed economy, not a socialist economy. In China, Xi et al is a Confucian-Marxist, a follower of Deng, not Mao. China is also...
Jim: We need a complete and total shutdown on career academics waxing poetic about “free markets” until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
Bruce: Markets do things that D patronage media make sound bad, in the service of sob stories for D patronage shakedowns. Markets also do bad things period. D patronage also does bad things period. Markets also do good things. D patronage also does good things. The first amendment allows people outside financial oligarchies and outside D patronage oligarchies to know which is which. Enemies of the first amendment from both intertwined oligarchies are everyone’s enemy.
Bob Sykes: One way to hide information is to mix it into a sea of noise.
Bruce: Scott Alexander made the point that everyone texting all the time is at least practicing basic literacy. And everyone who uses social media instead of television video news is reading, like reading the papers fifty years ago. Kurt Vonnegut used to say that if you walked into a house and saw his books or Tolkein’s, it didn’t mean they were reading the stuff. It was just furniture for a certain sort of person. But some were reading.
Bob Sykes: For some time now, Russia has imposed a total blockade on the Ukrainian Black Sea ports.
Lucklucky: Since when did Afghanistan not initiate the conflict? Or Iran? Actually there are several times the US would have been justified to answer Iran’s aggression and did not.
Phil B: “It started giving more money to the Follow Through models that had not done well.” Or, as it is known in the trade, reinforcing failure. Had those funds been spent on schools and pupils that did well, then how much better would they have succeeded? Compare and contrast the results of spending $50,000 per pupil in an inner city school and $20,000 per pupil in a less “diverse” neighbourhood. But failure must not only be reinforced but rewarded with more cash.
Isegoria: Asking Grok about that claim was eye opening: The frequently repeated claim that the US “initiated 81% of 248 armed conflicts from 1945 to 2001” originates in a Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies report (circulated around 2022 amid US-China tensions). It is not based on transparent methodology matching UCDP, Correlates of War (COW), or similar standards, treats “initiated” expansively (including indirect involvement, proxies, or interventions in existing conflicts), and is widely regarded...
Bob Sykes: One is reminded that of the 250, or so, armed conflicts since 1945, 80% were started by the US, and almost always against countries at peace with us and our allies. Recent examples are Panama, Haiti (too numerous to count), Granada (a UK commonwealth member), Serbia, Somalia (still active after 34 years), Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Syria, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, Lebanon (by proxy), and Ukraine. The coup of 2014 that installed the current neonazi junta was our doing.
Isegoria: From The Screwtape Letters (Letter 27), by C.S. Lewis: And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another.
David Foster: CS Lewis said (quoting very loosely) that if you want to destroy and infantry unit, you cut it off from its adjacent units…if you want to destroy a generation, you cut it off from its adjacent generations.
McChuck: A mild fever for a day or two after an inoculation is nothing. It’s a normal response to your body fighting an infection — which is the entire point of the inoculation. The strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots after the mRNA Covid shots are of real concern — but of course they can’t possibly study those, because they “don’t exist”.
Ozornik: It’s funny to read it against this: “The CDC advised her to take her temperature”, posted here on October 14th, 2026 Both Marburg and Ebola are not airborn and require direct bodily contact to spread. Methinks the author of the book might be either one of the lowest form of human existence – a journalist, or might have monetary interest in scaremongering oblivious sheeple. Oh, wait.
Phileas Frogg: People who intend to sit atop hierarchies should acquire the skills for getting and remaining on top of hierarchies. The great delusion of modern education is that they’ll somehow accomplish this by being good at math or engineering. I didn’t realize until I was in my mid-20′s that networking is an art, a specific skillset that needs deliberate cultivation. The best part is that when you tell most people they don’t believe you and just keep on hammering on about...
PM: Phileas Frogg says: “The first country to fully re-embrace rule by warriors is going to be hellacious to deal with for a few years.” Which puts me very much in mind of the Russian Federation’s ongoing initiative to load their bureaucracy with returning veterans of the SMO.
Bruce: Characters in 19th Century novels are constantly “overworking” and then taking off a summer or an entire year from their jobs. Getting ‘tired and emotional’? or other euphemisms for ‘publicly drunk’? Lot of overdrinking at work in 19th century culture.
Have you ever seen a Boa Constrictor Eating a Kangaroo?