John S.

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” — Sir Edmund Hillary

from Robin Dunbar’s (of “Dunbar’s Number” fame) book “Friends”

The deepest question this essay asks: What is a human being? The Being lineage (Aristotle → Aquinas → Declaration of Independence) says the human has a fixed nature, a private soul, and a proper end. The Becoming lineage says the human is raw material — engineerable, upgradable, programmable. The side that wins this question wins the civilization.

@HarmeetKDhillon Getting in 20k steps a day is tough and really hard on your shoes. Mind sharing what kind of shoes you're wearing for these long walks?

20k steps 115g protein Anxiety Suing someone Knitting

“The goal of human life is to establish order and harmony in body and soul, in the image of the eternal order of the cosmos.” Plato, “Timaeus”

"Japan shipbuilding slots vanish amid order surge" We just witnessed the Secretary of the Navy get fired, over the issue of shipbuilding. One of the issues that Secretary Phelan stated was the option to build ships overseas. Meanwhile, in Japan, they are in a 3 year backlog with no spots open until 2029. Per @Splash_247: "Asian shipyards have feasted on a supercycle of ship orders in the 2020s. By the end of the first quarter of 2026, the global shipping orderbook had hit a 17-year high, reaching 191m compensated gross tonnes – equivalent to 17% of the global fleet, the highest ratio since 2011, according to data from @BIMCONews." Meanwhile, the US has issued a 90 day extension to the Jones Act to allow the movement of oil and fuel between US ports on foreign ships. This should be a MASSIVE wake up call for the US. Even if we want to build overseas, in Korea or Japan, the yards are full of bulk carrier, tanker and LNG orders. The US should be focusing on building domestic tankers in US yards, using agreements with Japanese and Korean firms toward designs and practices in the US. But...how many people in the Administration or the US military are even aware of this? splash247.com/?p=237553

@Matt_Pinner Water reaches bucket 9 directly without needing any other buckets to fill up first or overflow. The others stay empty (or don't receive water at all).

Which bucket fills first ?? If you get it right, you a genius 👌

@herandrews @DudespostingWs The Navy has a long history of looking for scapegoats. Look at the case of Seaman Recruit Ryan Sawyer Mays, who was blamed (and charged) for the fire onboard the USS Bonhomme Richard.

@DudespostingWs This book is full of survivors’ firsthand stories. None of the men blamed Captain McVay.

This is actually kinda insane In 1996, a 14-year-old kid watched Jaws and got obsessed with Quint’s WWII monologue. He then began researching the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis, interviewed around 150 survivors, and reviewed 800 documents. His research focused on the role of the ship’s captain, Charles B. McVay III, who had been court-martialed after the incident. He came to believe that Captain Charles Butler McVay III, who had been blamed for the tragedy, was innocent. The 14-year-old, Hunter Scott, presented his findings to the United States Congress at age 14. In 2000, Congress passed a resolution clearing Captain McVay’s name, and the U.S. Navy later formally exonerated him.

@UnbiasedCrime @InsaneCope 🤣

@InsaneCope Technique matters...

I can imagine being the Yamnayan/Bantu raider who kills and eats this guy.

To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth. —Marcus Aurelius

@officer_Lew Subtitles would be helpful. What language is she speaking 🤔

WOW🚨: A sickening crunch of her skull smashing against the concrete echoed through the intersection. She had hit him while he was parked at a red light. When he got out to confront her, she pulled a pistol on him. And even fired off one round.. The rest unfolded exactly as you’d expect. FAFO.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​‼️ 🎥: @LASHYBILLS

René Girard's big idea was mimetic desire. We don't just want things on our own. We copy what other people want. One person's longing becomes contagious, and before long we’re not really chasing the girl, the crown, or the glory. Moreover, we're chasing our rival who wants it too. That imitation quickly turns into deadly rivalry, and whole societies can spiral into chaos. Girard's other big insight is that humanity has always had a brutal way out: pick a scapegoat. Blame one person (usually someone a bit different or vulnerable), pile all the hatred and violence onto them, drive them out or kill them, and suddenly the group feels united again. Peace returns - but it's built on a lie. Shakespeare, Girard loved to say, talks about almost nothing else. He stages this mimetic madness with unmatched clarity. Think of the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream swapping affections like a fever; or the jealous rage in Othello that Iago deliberately infects; or the rivalries in Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet where everyone starts mirroring everyone else's hatred until blood is spilled. In play after play, Shakespeare shows how desire spreads by imitation, how rivals become twisted doubles of each other, and how the crowd always needs its victim. What makes Shakespeare extraordinary is that he keeps lifting the veil on the scapegoat's innocence. He lets us see the machinery of envy and violence for what it is - and in doing so, he points toward the possibility of something better: a mercy that refuses to play the old sacrificial game. In Shakespeare's boundless mirror, we glimpse our own mimetic predicament: forever imitating, forever rivaling, forever in need of redemption from the stories we tell to justify our crimes. If you want to read more about Girard and Shakespeare read his insightful book, 'The Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare' (1991).

Most people still don’t have a fucking clue who actually ran the slave trade. Africans sold millions of their own people. Arabs ran the biggest slave empire in history for over a thousand years. Muslims castrated and enslaved millions of Europeans and Africans. Britain didn’t just abolish it, we spent blood and treasure hunting slave ships while the rest of the world carried on. We ended the fucking trade. Now the same people whose ancestors sold their own into slavery are screaming for reparations from the one nation that actually stopped it. Fuck your reparations. We owe you nothing. Zero white guilt. For the full breakdown read my longer article on my timeline. England. True Grit. Restore. My England for the English.

"Recapturing the past is to destroy a little of one's pride.”

“Only someone completely identified with God could have understood and undone the closed circle of violence in which humanity was trapped.” — René Girard (as quoted by David Cayley)

@HMongilio Diego Garcia 😁

I'd like a vacation for every weekend I've had to work since Feb. 28. On a remote island. With no cell service.

@elonmusk @TheGriftReport Medieval version

@TheGriftReport Execute

THIS IS HORIFFIC 5-year-old Charlotte Buskey was starved to death by her own father in a house of horrors in Schenectady, New York. Robert Buskey Jr, 35, locked his daughter in her bedroom for months with an external lock and tape so she couldn’t escape. He gave her no food or water and left her to die curled in the fetal position inside a small pack n play crib. The little girl was found severely emaciated, dehydrated, with sunken eyes, her body completely devoid of food according to the autopsy. Her brother was drugged with cocaine and locked in a makeshift cage in the dining room. The father spent his days playing video games and using drugs while both children were completely cut off from the outside world. The house was stocked with food, yet the children were deliberately starved and neglected. Buskey pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and giving narcotics to a child. He was sentenced to 27 years to life. Sickening beyond words.

@DrJStrategy 🤞

@PalantirTech 👍

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

When a culture gets rid of traditions they tend to gain back what those traditions protected against.