Patty Rick

The Blue’s Clues drag parade featuring non-binary dolphins and trans beavers with double mastectomy scars.

Unfortunately, I completely agree that the United States of America is rapidly descending into all-out conflict between left and right. The Luigi left, Kirk killers, anti-Tesla terrorists, and Altman attackers are already in shoot-on-sight mode against conservatives, libertarians, and technologists. The right isn’t there yet; they’re called reactionaries because they only react, so they’re always one cycle behind. Thus, the left has already started shooting while the right is still “only” mirroring the lawfare of last decade’s left. But anyone can see how incandescently angry the American right is getting, so one can expect them to mirror leftist tactics eventually, just as J6 followed BLM. A problem then arises. You see, when communists and nationalists duke it out, technologists tend to be hated by both sides…and tend to leave. That’s what happened in Europe. In the early 1900s, Europe was the undisputed center of science. But then the far left rose to power in Russia, and in response arose a far right in Germany, and then those two psychotic factions blew each other up and took much of Europe with them. The result was that scientists with options left. Shown below is the graph of Nobel prizes. Science used to be centered in Europe when America was still a relative backwater…renowned for cranking out widgets but not much else. Then, as Europe tore itself apart, the smart scientists (and capitalists) simply left for America. Many had no choice; you just couldn’t be a Russian capitalist in the Soviet Union or a Jewish scientist in Nazi Germany, no matter how many years your family might have been in the country. Passionate protestations of ideological loyalty and everlasting patriotism didn’t matter. At best the enemy classes and races were unbanked and denaturalized; at worst they were simply killed. And arguably, all of that — the communism, the nationalism, the wars — all of that arose from the disruption wrought by the Industrial Revolution. We might anticipate similar levels of disruption from the Information Revolution. If so, if America is torn between Democrats and Republicans, or Wokes and MAGAs, or whatever factions succeed them, it’s just not going to be a good place for technological progress. Instead, progress will decentralize to other locations around the world, as it did before.

27 is definitely the ideal age to kill oneself. Right before the transition to a major adult identity you know might be stifling or cowed and will inevitably lose the vibrancy and electric power of youth. Killing yourself at 27 is romantic, at 31 it's a bit pathetic.

I don’t think a “slide into third worldism” is a real thing or a risk. It’s just policing anti Israel content into acceptable soft critiques like it’s expensive or whatever and wasn’t really razed before Oct 7. No one seriously identifies as an old edge case Maoist tendency it’s just a pajorative. We used to have fun here. White Sharia, Appalachiastan, American Taliban memes. People didn’t get mad. Everyone got it. But then Oct 7 happened the containment right got allowed to do anti Muslim racism again and this was a part of it. And so this charge of alliance came out. As if saying” I support this political party that is fighting a war to stay in their homeland against my blood enemy and I don’t believe Jewish propaganda about them” is some kind of ironclad defense pact where I promised them each a house in Ohio once take Al-Quds. It’s ridiculous and I don’t take it serious. I liked the Northman and I hope Robert Eggers makes more movies so am I in an alliance with him? Am I forming an alliance with Costco on the way home from work to get a hot dog? Am I forming an alliance with this Artic Monkeys album I have on while I work? If I recommend a Harry Potter book have I formed an alliance with JK Rowling? It’s very silly. It’s hard to take the charges seriously. I don’t view it as a serious risk. Obviously given our stance on this discourse. There is more to say about how the online right is more similar to say the K-pop fandom than a political movement. You can’t police someone out of it. You can dox them or block them or takfir them but they just keep posting. You can’t ever get a knock out punch. Elijah Schaffer is still here.

Continuum Ep. 8 | Screening Ourselves to Death Ryan and Keith discuss the smartphone revolution and the sociology of screen addiction. 0:00 Introduction 1:26 Early social media 4:17 The growth of image-based platforms 7:36 Social media and female psychology 14:00 The decline of social life 21:02 Childhood development and screen use 30:49 Population decline and atomisation 35:00 Gen Z's screen addiction 37:43 How many college students are able to read? 45:18 What's happening to our attention? 47:26 What can be done?