mbz

There's an old joke in systems biology called "How Biologists Fix a Radio." A biologist, tasked with figuring out why a radio doesn't work, removes components one by one and catalogs the result. Remove this transistor: the radio makes a horrible screeching sound. Conclusion: this is the "horrible screeching transistor." Remove another component: the radio goes silent. Conclusion: this is the "silence transistor." This is essentially what we do with genomics. We see which genes are mutated in cancer and assume they must be "cancer genes." We see which genes are differentially expressed and assume they must be "important." But correlation is not causation, and a parts list is not a circuit diagram. You can have a complete inventory of every resistor, capacitor, and transistor in a radio and still have no idea how it plays music.

people misunderstand the icarus story. the problem was not that he flew too high. it's that the wings were made of beeswax, which offered very little resistance to heating. with modern materials he would have had no problems. we can fly as close to the sun as we want now

@feelsdesperate They're Overton Window washers.

New article by me, open to everyone. morgothsreview.com/p/the-retard-w…

Finding out what Socrates found out a few thousand years ago.

As Ron Paul said, we could defend the United States with submarines and all our troops back home. As Abraham Lincoln said, the combined armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River in a trial of a thousand years—if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. The Iran war is not necessary to defend Americans. It’s a war of choice.

Transgenderism is an ongoing project of attempting to normalize a bizarre subculture built around esoteric pseudo-medical practices from the outermost fringe of human extremity and make it compulsory for every American to join that subculture and to make that subculture the mainstream culture of the Western world. One requires only the most cursory understanding of the pioneering figures responsible for the mainstreaming of transgenderism -- who they were and what their motives were -- to understand this as a matter of certainty. It is as if ascetics who scourge themselves with whips in public or amputee fetishists began teaching their beliefs to young schoolchildren and recruiting them to join their ranks. One is forced into the strange position of referencing practices that are not more bizarre than transgenderism -- that are indeed arguably less bizarre -- to make an analogy in an attempt to restore some semblance of sanity and proportionality to our thinking about this. The normalization has already gone far enough that the whole culture suffers from vertigo where it is unable to orient itself in space or time. Giving the same off-label cancer drugs that are used to chemically castrate adult sex offenders to pubescent children who have been brainwashed to fear the decisive stage of mental, physical, and emotional maturation that resolves gender dysphoria in children in most cases is self-evidently an act of madness and medicalized child abuse unmatched by anything in the history of modern medicine. It took the self-lobotomization of the American professional and managerial classes for our truth-seeking apparatus not to see this fact that is self-evident to any normal person with normal human instincts. This self-lobotomization occurred across mainstream institutions of all kinds -- all it required was the incantation of a few odious euphemisms, the manipulation of rewards and punishments, and confident claims by various authorities that self-evidently ludicrous claims were in fact settled science. Now we are in phase one of recognizing that there was never any science to any of it. It was all a lie told by cultists who managed to infiltrate and corrupt society's knowledge-generating, certifying, and enforcement apparatus -- it was the most outrageous of all such possible lies, so outrageous that nobody could believe that anyone would attempt it, much less succeed, unless there was some actual substance behind it, some real grounds for epistemic and moral confidence. There was none.

My view of journalists is similar to my view of cops: their institution is vital to a free and fair society, and they rely on public trust, and they've developed this culture that arrogantly —almost gleefully— flaunts breaking this trust at every opportunity.

A key feature of the case for the war in Iraq was the Neocon campaign to convince the American people that then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was lying about the immense difficulty that lay ahead

I think for a lot of people, it started with the government cover-up of Jimmy Savile for decades. That has never been effectively dealt with, so the perception of exploitation and corruption continues. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) also exposed a shameful pattern: elite UK institutions - from Parliament and political parties to the Home Office - repeatedly turned a blind eye to credible child sex abuse allegations against prominent figures. MPs like Peter Morrison (Thatcher’s aide) and Cyril Smith were rumoured or known to have sexual interests in children, yet shielded from police action by prosecutors, whips' offices, and party loyalty that prioritised image over justice. Also, 114 Home Office files on historical abuse claims from 1979–99 vanished - destroyed, lost, or "not found" - including Geoffrey Dickens’ explosive dossiers naming alleged Westminster abusers passed to top officials. Whips hoarded MPs' secrets to control them, honours flowed to suspects, and inquiries slammed "institutional complacency" that valued status over child safety for decades. Systemic protection of the powerful. Shocking failure.

this is the *least* humane proposal for immigration enforcement. not even Trump and Vance are suggesting this, as it would be squarely targeted at the most law abiding, productive illegal immigrants, and completely irrelevant for criminals. perfect Jason tweet

@PashaKamyshev thanks man, this was excellent

Who owns the state and what do they want?

Reminder.

Yes. As deputy FBI director he had limited power to change the system. As a podcaster, he’ll be unstoppable.

when I worked as a grocery stocker, if product became unsellable due to damage, you weren't allowed to eat any of it it all had to go in the compactor the reason was, if they let you eat it, it would incentivize damaging product

This is easy to mock but it's actually profound.

The role of intellectuals is to challenge authority, not serve it.

*RECORD SCRATCH* Inspired by what now?