Phil McCary

@BigBrainHistori @_HistoryNerd This era of Peterson was very very good.

Jordan Peterson on why Hitler's most irrational decisions reveal his true motivation: "We assume that Hitler wanted to win, but that's not a very intelligent assumption. Why would you assume that he wasn't exactly a good guy? So why should we assume that he was aiming at the good that he was promoting even in his own terms." Peterson lays out the strategic reality. As Germany began losing the war, Hitler had a clear choice: redirect resources toward the war effort or continue pouring them into extermination. He chose extermination. "What happened as the Germans started to lose the war? Did Hitler lose faith in his own ability? No, he believed that the Germans had betrayed him with weakness, and so he was perfectly willing to accelerate the rate at which Germany was losing the war." This is what makes Hitler even more evil than the standard narrative suggests. He wasn't a monster who went too far in pursuit of victory. Victory was never the real goal. "When Hitler and his minions had the choice... you can suspend your unnecessary demolition of people, win the damn war, and then pick it up afterwards, or while you're losing you can just accelerate the mayhem even though it's counterproductive... well, they picked to accelerate the mayhem." Peterson draws on a principle from Carl Jung to explain this: "If you can't figure out what someone is doing or why, look at the outcome and infer the motivation. If it produces mayhem, perhaps it was aiming at mayhem." The outcome of Hitler's decisions wasn't a failed utopia. It was the death of 6 million Jews, the obliteration of 120 million people, and Europe left in ruins. Peterson argues that wasn't a byproduct — it was the point. He also challenges the common explanation that wars are simply fought over territory and resources: "That's what the wretchedly simple-minded economists presume... but the idea that there are natural resources that we fight over because there's a shortage of them is a pretty oversimplified view of human beings." Peterson's deeper argument is about the nature of evil itself. Truly destructive people don't destroy as a means to an end. Destruction is the end. Everything else is a cover story. "Whatever pathologies you were carrying around in your destructive little soul, whatever element of Cain was deeply embedded in you, had the opportunity to be manifest fully at every moment of your waking existence." The noble mission, the thousand-year Reich, the promise of civilisational glory — all of it was a front. Peterson frames this as an archetypal manifestation of Cain: "He's going to put up a front that says, 'Well, I'm your savior.' It's like, well, destructive people think that Cain is their savior."

He should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom I'm 100% serious. This is far more important than some of the nonsense other recipients have done (actors, musicians, athletes etc)

Corporate generosity!

The Artemis II astronauts were all smiles on the flight deck of USS John P. Murtha after they were extracted from their Orion spacecraft after splashdown.

Marcus Aurelius wrote this over 1800 years ago: “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

Four strangers eating dinner on a sidewalk in Paris is a $3 billion urban planning decision from 1853. This is Place Saint-Sulpice, 6th arrondissement. Those people having dinner on the sidewalk are sitting in infrastructure that took 17 years and the demolition of 20,000 buildings to create. Baron Haussmann redesigned Paris between 1853 and 1870, replacing five-meter medieval streets with 30-meter boulevards. The mandate was "aérer, unir, et embellir." Ventilate, unite, and beautify. He built 34,000 new buildings with strict rules: identical limestone facades, five stories max, uniform cornices, height proportional to street width. The chairs all face the street. That's not random. Parisian terrasse culture treats the sidewalk as a theater where the city is the performance. You sit side by side with your companion, not across from each other. The table is yours for as long as you want it. No check dropped on your table 35 minutes in. No manager optimizing table turns per hour. The entire economic model of the French café rejects the premise that a seat is a unit of revenue to be maximized. Paris has over 12,000 cafés. If you visited a different terrasse every single day, it would take you almost 30 years to see them all. The city applied for UNESCO heritage status for its café terrasses in 2018, arguing they're a form of intangible cultural infrastructure. The reason most cities can't replicate this photo is the same reason most companies can't replicate a good culture. The inputs are boring. Wide sidewalks. Uniform building heights that create human-scale streetscapes. Zoning that puts residential above commercial. A cultural norm that leisure in public space is a right, not a purchase. Every American city chose parking lots and drive-throughs instead. The architecture made the behavior impossible before anyone even had the chance to choose it. Nothing is stopping humanity from living like this. Except concrete, zoning laws, and a 70-year bet on the automobile that most cities are still too proud to reverse.

A student today at my elite university admitted to me today that she took a class so she could work on reading for more than 20 minutes at a time. She can't read. She mainly skims and summarizes, she says and still gets A's. This student is, by professional standards, illiterate. Gonna have high GPA when she graduates. This conversation was had after 6 of 22 students dropped my course because the maximum reading per week in one week was over 100 pages. What people aren't grasping is that this is literally *dangerous*. These people are going to be come doctors, engineers, etc. They are - by any metric - vastly less capable than prior generations. These effects are cumulative over a lifetime. This grade inflation is part of the problem, but not even close to the entirety. And the problem obviously starts in K-12. Students don't know history because, you can't actually become historically literate on the advice of 'never assign more than 30 pages a week'. You can't develop any of the skills that came with literacy. This is, quite honestly, a civilizational catastrophe.

@hjluks This lines up with McGill’s work on spine health. You’re not going to stretch it away.

In some tendons — gluteal tendons at the hip especially— compression combined with tension accelerates degeneration. This is why stretching certain tendons is a mistake, not a treatment. Stretching certain tendons causes compression and can cause damage and worsen pain. I get a lot of skeptical looks when I say this.

Tendon pain is the most common reason people come to see me. Most of it is self-inflicted — from doing too much, too soon, or from doing too little for too long. Let's review what most people (including many doctors) don't understand about why tendons hurt and how to fix them. 🧵

@LadyDemosthenes @JoeEsjay 💯

Text to my husband today: “Where do we keep the house filters?” Why? Because the AC guy was here today and offered to change them for us, a job that my husband handles. He knows when to change them, and he knows the size and type of filters we use. I do not. Because in a marriage you divvy up the mental load. I handle the grocery list because I cook, because I’m better at it! He does the dishes, so when he’s low on dishwasher soap he tells me and I add it to the list. This video implies only women have a mental load which is utter BS. Husbands and wives just handle different aspects of the household. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.

Jim Abbott: el hombre que redefinió lo imposible. ​Nacido sin la mano derecha, Abbott no pedía excusas. Su técnica era pura maestría: lanzaba y, en un movimiento fluido y casi irreal, se calzaba el guante para fildear. No era un truco, era genio.

The implementation of free market and capitalism in Eastern Europe made them not only much wealthier, but also significantly improved life expectancy. The only people in favor of socialism are those who have never experienced socialist misery by themselves. Don’t listen to them.

This is why Americans are the deadliest fighters on earth. I met a priest yesterday who just got accepted to chaplain school in Newport. I asked him the obvious question: Marines or Navy? Navy, he said. His face fell a little. He told me he could never be a Marine because every Marine is a rifleman, and as a priest he can’t carry a weapon. He’s hoping to get assigned to a Marine unit anyway. All chaplains are Navy officers, so that’s the only door in. I laughed. I feel a little bad about that. Then I explained to him what “Devil Doc” means. The Marine Corps doesn’t have medics. They use Navy Corpsmen. I told him: when you get out to the fleet, find a Marine sergeant with a couple of Purple Hearts and tell him Devil Docs “aren’t real Marines.” Be prepared to duck. Marines are violently particular about who gets to wear their uniform. Navy Corpsmen and Navy chaplains who have eaten dirt alongside them in combat qualify. Full stop. My dad was Air Force. Not even Navy. I remember going to VFW halls with him as a kid. Someone would ask him what service, he’d say Air Force, and the room would chuckle a little. Then they’d find out he was a medic, and the air in the room changed. Something close to reverence. Dad hated being honored. He had one line he used to deflect it: “I didn’t do much. Save your praise for my cousin the PJ.” That always broke the ice. PJs are the Air Force special operators who go into hell to pull downed pilots out. They will take casualties and are prepared to die to rescue a single pilot or crewman. The math doesn’t math out. Why would any combat force take multiple casualties to rescue one air force jet jockey? What the padre is about to learn is that the military has a hierarchy that has nothing to do with rank, and nothing to do with the service stitched on your chest. Have you deployed? Have you seen combat? In every firefight there are men who move toward the guns and men who hang back. And when the guy at the tip of the spear is pinned down, bleeding, with rounds cracking past his head, there is exactly one word he screams into the radio. “Medic.” Here is the catch, and it is the whole reason America fights the way America fights. That Marine is willing to push forward into fire BECAUSE he knows the Corpsman is coming. He knows the medevac birds will land in the hot LZ. He knows the Devil Doc will drag him out by his plate carrier if it comes to that. And, if the medic can’t help, if he has what Dad called “injuries incompatible with life,” he knows that chaplain will crawl on his belly to administer last rights and deliver him to heaven. The F-15 pilot punching out over enemy territory knows the same thing. He knows the PJs will move heaven and earth to reach him, and turn whatever is shooting at him into a smoking crater of hell on earth on the way in. This is the quiet math underneath American violence. Our warriors are the fiercest on earth not because they are more aggressive, not just because they are better trained, or better equipped, though they are all of those things. They are the fiercest because they know, in their bones, that when they key the mic and call for help, help is coming in hot. Take that away, and you don’t have the U.S. military anymore. You have a security force.

The promoters of “gender-affirming care” tried to quash scientific debate on its effects through name-calling and by designating as “settled science” the claim that it improves the mental health of dysphoric kids. It’s now clear why they feared open scientific inquiry.

They found him!!! Happy Easter!!

President Zelenskyy: They (Iran) are accomplices of Russia The EU can pretend Iran isn’t its war, but in reality Iran has already waged war on Europe by backing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

@UWTrack @UWAthletics Flyin higher than Brad Walker is a big deal. Well done!!

One more 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 to wrap the weekend! 💥 Jimmy Rhoads wins the Texas Relays title and adds the outdoor Husky record to his indoor record. 🏅🏅 He flies 18-10.25 today (5.75-meters) and goes to No. 2 in the NCAA outdoors. #GoHuskies

I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Take a moment and listen to this 81 second response from Victor Glover after being asked if he had any thoughts leading up to Easter. I don’t quite think it can be overstated how perfect this crew is for the job.

Listen to this tough ass Veteran describe his time during World War I. It's not everyday you hear from somebody who was there first hand. Amazing.

@UWTrack @JeshuaAnderson Fastest since a skinny kid from Bothell. Nice work Alex! Getting to the sub 45 club is special and you’re close!!

Alex Rhodes dominates the men's 400-meters! 🥇 He clocks a huge new 𝑷𝑹 of 45.22 seconds, the fastest by a Dawg in 18 years and the new #⃣3⃣ mark in school history! #GoHuskies