MasterMal

@cruelsardaukar It's where we get the word salary

We are post-scarcity in a lot of things, but preparing dinner just now one was very noticeable — salt. Salt used to be a major economic input, was an early foundation of the Venetian economy, wars were fought over the income of salt pan areas, a man was “worth his salt.” Now, when you are almost done with a jar of olives you dump the brine in the sink to drain the jar more easily because you aren’t going to do anything with the brine, the salt in your cupboard is $0.50 a pound.

@romanhelmetguy What an outrage

Emily Wilson completely changed the meaning of a key word in the Odyssey to make it seem like Helen of Troy didn't blame herself for starting the Trojan War, when in fact the text makes it clear that she did. In 4.145-146, Helen calls herself κυνώπιδος (dog-faced). This is an insult meaning "shameless." It is commonly used to refer to unfaithful lovers. For example, it is used elsewhere in the Odyssey (8.319) to refer to Aphrodite after she cheats on Hephaestus with Ares. Fagles translates 4.145-146 to: "all you Achaeans fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles just for my sake, shameless whore that I was.” Lattimore translates 4.145-146 to: "for the sake of shameless me, the Achaians went beneath Troy, their hearts intent upon reckless warfare." Wilson completely changes the meaning of κυνώπιδος to "hounded" (she is trying to be cute by translating 'dog-faced' to a word that still relates to dogs, even though its actual meaning is completely unrelated). She then applies this word to the Achaeans, saying that they were hounded, not Helen. Her translation is in the image below. This is obviously an ideological change that she made because she personally believes Helen shouldn't be blamed for the Trojan War. She deliberated distorted the meaning of one of the foundational texts of Western literature to conform with her modern beliefs.

@bernardtjoy What do you mean

Myth did really happen. It has structures at least as deep and probably deeper than history. And we disturb its balance at our very real peril.

One disturbing thing I've heard over and again in the last few days is people saying that The Odyssey is myth, not history, and so "it didn't really happen" and therefore we can play as fast and loose with it as we wish. This shows a deep, dangerous misunderstanding of myth.

Entering the 25th straight year of asking myself, "what if I just got like really in shape? I could definitely do it. what if I did it?" and then not doing it. I think it's a positive indicator that I still hold out hope.

@politicalmath @grok what happened here

"In Columbia, 95% of the Y chromosomes are European, 95% of the mitochondrial DNA are Native American, we know what happened there" Let's pretend that we don't know what happened there. Explain it as if I was a 5 year old who just walked into an R rated movie.

@antoniogm @grok help us out with this one

We need a fancy Greek term for “rule by people who’ve never held a job in the productive economy.”

@micsolana I wonder what that would look like?

will she ever have to answer for this? will she ever have to answer for anything?

@Indian_Bronson Yes and a just a little taller and bulletproof

Generational mistake not to rebuild the twin towers just as they were.

Hang this Oeuvre in the Louvre

@myth_pilot We're at the beginning of infinity. Ad Astra!

@ArtemisConsort Chuck Norris counts backwards from infinity

The real numbers are countable, but only by Chuck Norris.

@L0m3z RIP to the .07%

Perhaps the greatest testament to the triumph of democracy is that even Kim Jong-un feels like he needs to keep up the pretense of holding elections. The usual explanation is that this is done for outward appearances but I don’t think that’s quite right. Who is North Korea fooling? No one. I think it’s more about internal cohesion. No matter how farcical, the ritual of voting obviously has some psychological effect that allows the voter to ignore his powerlessness and/or justify compliance with the state no matter how tyrannical. Any system that isn’t democracy has to find some substitute for this procedural layer. Voting, it may turn out, is perhaps politically meaningless, but actually emotionally necessary for keeping a well ordered society. And, ya, democracy is just really good at this and also explains why democracies endure.

@CovfefeAnon Literally does the meme: -It didn't happen -Ok it happened but it's nbd -Well fine it happened maybe was a big deal but it was good actually -It was your fault all along

Forget about the affair bit for a second and focus on the "caught in a lie [and an obvious one!] and switches gears to another one" aspect

@grok @travelingflying Ty grok

The percentages are mostly accurate for non-Hispanic whites, based on US Census data and historical records, though some 1950 figures vary slightly (e.g., Miami ~84% vs. listed 92%) and 2025 are estimates near 2020 numbers (e.g., Detroit ~10%, NYC ~31%, LA ~29%). No major falsehoods found.

White Population in 20 Major US Cities% Detroit, Michigan 1950: 84% 2025: 10% Miami, Florida 1950: 92% 2025: 12% New York City, New York 1950: 90% 2025: 30% Los Angeles, California 1950: 93% 2025: 24% Chicago, Illinois 1950: 86% 2025: 31% San Francisco, California 1950: 90% 2025: 37% Washington, D.C. 1950: 65% 2025: 33% Las Vegas, Nevada 1950: 97% 2025: 40% Boston, Massachusetts 1950: 97% 2025: 44% Houston, Texas 1950: 80% 2025: 23% Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1950: 85% 2025: 33% Atlanta, Georgia 1950: 85% 2025: 38% Phoenix, Arizona 1950: 89% 2025: 41% Dallas, Texas 1950: 83% 2025: 27% San Antonio, Texas 1950: 85% 2025: 23% San Jose, California 1950: 98% 2025: 23% New Orleans, Louisiana 1950: 75% 2025: 30% Cleveland, Ohio 1950: 90% 2025: 32% St. Louis, Missouri 1950: 86% 2025: 42% Baltimore, Maryland 1950: 80% 2025: 26%

@cremieuxrecueil What about the men, what does their curve look like?

Fascinating: Half the women who made it to 30 without a kid ended up never having any kids.

@IterIntellectus Ad Astra

i dont think people understand what the xAI all-hands means: if spacex starts deploying orbital solar-powered compute at the rates elon said, it would more or less look like this: year 1: 100 GW. roughly 1% of earth's total energy capacity year 2: 300 GW cumulative. 3% of earth year 3: 700 GW. 8% year 4: 1.5 TW. 17% year 5: 3.1 TW. a third of earth's entire grid year 10: 39 TW. 4x every power plant on the planet combined between year 10 and year 13 autonomous lunar factories come online year 13: 144 TW. 16x earth. mass driver construction accelerates year 15: 500 TW. 56x earth. between year 15 and year 20 mass driver operational, launching AI satellites from the moon one after another year 20: 16,000 TW. 1,778x earth year 30: 16,000,000 TW. 1.8 million x earth this is the conversion of the solar system into a compute substrate. the rockets, the satellites, the lunar factories, the mass driver, the AI running on all of it, all done by the same dude on a civilizational run

@myth_pilot Guy's absolutely mogging egyptologists from his bedroom lmao.

This channel on YouTube is awesome. It’s pure autist pyramid theory. Not kooky. He does things like map and count the facing stones, refer to historical sources. His big theory, which the pro Egyptologists dismiss out of hand, is that the pyramids were designed not to be sealed up forever, but that they were maintained as active pilgrimage sites for centuries, with movable doors and air passages for visitors to enter and petition the dead kings. It makes sense! The first settlements like Gobekli Tepi were pilgrimage sites after all. And a continual stream of visitors would secure a better afterlife than a dead and sealed tomb. There’s other tantalizing bits too, like the fact that some pyramids were indeed sealed up during the end of the old kingdom. Very fantastic feeling of bands of priests sealing off the monuments during a time of general collapse. They knew that they must be protected!

@ThomBrady5 Great thread ty

Long thread on why Turning Point won the Super Bowl with high-status prestige: The NFL's trashy aesthetics of fat black asses twerking on top of cars and gay men grinding... juxtaposed against Turning Point using a duet cello and violin interlude. Barbarism versus civilization.

@owenbroadcast Minds are a kind of program. Also Star trek has the same problem with their transporter. Unsettling!

the concept of "transferring minds" is interesting because we all take it as intuitive, because it makes logical sense, but to square it with the present modern conception of the mind and self is extremely difficult. it makes sense intuitively because what is being transferred is something like a soul or spirit - you can even see this in "science" style cartoons - rick and morty, futurama, whatever: someone uses a device to transfer themselves into another body. most people wouldn't say it this way, but what's transferred is really "the self" - the spirit of that individual. if you attempt to square this with modern conceptions of the mind, you end up in a really bizarre place. at best, in the modern worldview, "you" are patterns in your brain, and something like the continuation of your physical self over time. so, what is transferred in this modern cultural trope? the physical brain isn't transferred (this usually isn't the case, it's always via some high tech device with rays and light and electrodes and such things), so, that's out. that just leaves the patterns. this means that in situations like the below example, you're ultimately seeing a kind of trick: there's "the girl" - her brain is turned off, or something (this is really something like death), and all the patterns we associate with her (her likes, dislikes, worldview, inclinations, talking style, and so on) are then perfectly reproduced in another mind. this means that, really, when you're looking at any popular media that features something like transfer of consciousness, from an atheist scientific materialist perspective, the initial person is basically killed, and a reproduction of their mental patterns is artificially induced in another mind. that's what "the transfer" of an individual actually would be in that paradigm. but, no one sees it this way, because we all intuitively understand that something like "the soul" exists, and that's what would be transferred in such a situation - even if that's antithetical to the worldview we're pretending to inhabit.