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This is a good small road movie from a few months ago with Channing Tatum as an ex-Army Ranger and a similarly Iraq-damaged Belgian Malinois Shepherd war dog named Lulu. Tatum needs his former commanding officer to sign off on his job application for a high paying Blackwater-type mercenary job, but the officer doubts that Tatum’s brain has recovered. However, when Lulu’s handler, an old war buddy of Tatum’s, drives into a tree at 120 mph, the officer offers to sign Tatum’s form if he will get the hero dog / crazed beast to New Mexico in five days for the handler’s funeral.
Tatum is a consistently solid movie star and he is strong in both the comic and sentimental scenes. Bill Burr is noteworthy as an ex-military cop. I don’t know much of anything about the modern military, but the screenplay seemed reasonably realistic.
The one shortcoming of the movie is that Belgian Malinois dogs have fairly dark faces and dark eyes, so they aren’t all that charismatic on camera.
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I sure do like Jane Adams. She’s cute as a button.
Don’t mind if I do!
Off-topic but very important! (MORE tag not applicable here)
Some worthy extra suggestions from yours truly:
Tuesdays With Morrie Povich
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)
But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.
LOL:
Dave Pinsen retweeted:
Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:
Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …
… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.
"I took a speed reading course. Then I read War and Peace in an hour. It's about...Russia."
The MORE tag is always applicable.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F4t4qtbvQbo
~~
As to content: Dude can read whatever he wants, but it strikes me a pretty boring list. (A bunch of it I've read and most of the rest not what I'd want to read now. Though I still haven't read Sun Tzu.)
Like a lot of older men, my tastes now run much more to non-fiction and actually learning something. If commenters want to offer their recommendations, especially in the history and general "how we got here" space I'll take note.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Twinkie
The Bell Curve
Culture of Critique
Yggdrasil's content
Early Steve Sailer highlights on HBD etc.
Those are probably the most influential books of my adult life. Also a chronological ordering of the Koran was worthwhile. I had to do it myself in the 2000 era; now it is done for you.
https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/chrono.htm
Also the Gulag Archipelago.
I think Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are also worth reading to understand events of the 20th century.
And as Steve says, read a proper multi-volume childrens' encyclopaedia or 3 for good measure. Any recommendations there?
How to Be an Auntie Racist by Ex Ibram Kendi
Do The First Thing That Pops Into Your Head by Malcolm Gladwell
My Lovely White Teef Bones
This Land is Our Land, Now Get Out Whitey: An Immigrant's Eviction Notice by Suketu Mehta
Golf Course Design: Fascinating! by Steve SailerReplies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
The one shortcoming of the movie is that Belgian Malinois dogs have fairly dark faces and dark eyes, so they aren’t all that charismatic on camera.
You have zero idea how aspergers you come across with that “observation” do you?
I’m not criticising just observing.
This movie sounds typically pro-war, destroy your family for the Bush and Clinton family biennial worship of Moloch and Davos Man, doesn’t anyone know about Hitler and Ann Frank and the shoa, here’s a dog to identify with as we subliminally urge you on to slaughter The Other!
Btw, did you know that to be a Tunnel Rat in Vietnam you had to be below 6 foot in height?
I wonder how many of them “Ann” Coulter would deign fuck if he would be so moved.
I haven’t seen it yet but I will see The Banshees of Inisherin
There is not much connection between ideological truth and artistic merit. A lot of great WWII movies were pretty much propaganda, but are still very watchable.
"The Shimmery"
It's a reboot of Rosemary's Baby with Steve playing the roles of Mia Farrow's husband and their baby. The devil will be played by the sleek, objectionable animal Steve picked up in Burbank.
What’s realism nowadays?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-12-31/strange-new-respect-nazi-adjacent-pagans
https://media.nbcmiami.com/2022/12/Miami.Okeechobee-e1671204353387.jpg
The bitchy, snippy tone doesn't inspire much sympathy. It conjures up an image of a Karen Kohen type wagging her finger in your face: "Three of my grandparents died at Auschwitz, so don't call me a stuck-up bitch!"Replies: @Veteran Aryan, @Beavertales
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Jenner Ickham Errican quoted “Mart” as saying:
Well… Lev Fridman is 39 years old and is only now reading 1984?
Does seem a bit late.
I do wonder about people who make up a reading list based on others’ suggestions. It seems a bit like going on a diet or working out because it is “good for you.”
I don’t read books because it is, in some abstract sense, good for me.
For example, I recently read P. J. E. Peebles’ The Whole Truth: A Cosmologist’s Reflections on the Search for Objective Reality, just published in 2022, because I am curious about what is now known about cosmology. It is an eccentric though well-written book: Peebles, who is a Nobel laureate in the field, uses cosmology to present his views on epistemology. Sure to drive philosophers (and people who think they know philosophy like a few commenters here!) absolutely up the wall!
And I also just read Christopher Blattman’s 2022 book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace because of all the discussion about the war to liberate the Donbass. Nothing specific about Ukraine, but it turns out to present some really eye-opening perspectives about applying game theory to issues of war and peace.
And I just finished Timothy Zahn’s 2022 novel, The Icarus Plot simply because it was fun — entertaining and imaginative “space opera.”
I have a long list of books I want to read because I want to know the specific knowledge contained in those specific books.
And what I want to know but do not yet know is going to differ from any other human being. There is no uniform list of worthwhile books.
Indeed, what is worthwhile for any human being when he is twenty will have little overlap with what is worthwhile when he is forty.
Books are still where we store the systematic knowledge humans have acquired about the nature of reality. You want to know something about such knowledge — find the appropriate book.
But to read a book because someone else thinks it would be good for my soul in some way… well, I have things to do and promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.
As for dog fiction, I'm currently reading Where the Red Fern Grows -- with my 8yo. It has finally convinced me to get the kid a puppy. We're going to look at a litter today.Replies: @HammerJack, @MEH 0910
Thanks for mentioning Peebles' book. Looks interesting. I will read.Replies: @PhysicistDave
Now I think of it, a list of subjects that are ignored or maligned in mainstream education might be more generally useful than a book list. I consider it abstractly good for me that I at least know these subjects exist. While swimming with the academic fish, I had scarcely heard of the dark school of psychometricians, and, when I did catch a glimpse at the edge, it was dismissed as low status or pseudoscience. Only when I found dry land and clambered my amphibian self out of the obscure depths did I discovered Psychometrics and its significance for "Understanding Human History" (another book discovered by recommendation). Propaganda is also a subject. It ought to be recognized as such, all the more so given the increasing asymmetry in power between the masses and the propaganda machines. Another: Practical Reasoning (should replace the typical intro to stats course, but run for at least two semesters). Logic and logical fallacies. Anti-Metaphysics, a subject designed to cure the temptation to squander time in the wasteland of metaphysics. Realpolitik--something you get little taste of even if you take a BA in polisci. Not unrelated, but studiously ignored: Military History. History of Science and Technology. The Nature of Economic Systems, with historical illustrations of each in action. I have met middle-aged and elderly people, formally "educated," who do not realize that these are real subjects of inquiry in which some knowledge has been attained. The mind control institutions prefer it should be so. I know this is nuts: I'm imagining a functional education system in a functional country.Replies: @Rob, @PhysicistDave
This movie sounds typically pro-war, destroy your family for the Bush and Clinton family biennial worship of Moloch and Davos Man, doesn’t anyone know about Hitler and Ann Frank and the shoa, here’s a dog to identify with as we subliminally urge you on to slaughter The Other!
There is not much connection between ideological truth and artistic merit. A lot of great WWII movies were pretty much propaganda, but are still very watchable.
“Magic Mike” is back!
Steve doesn’t come off as aspie to me by correctly pointing out that that these dogs are not very charismatic with their rather invisible features. You on the other hand come off as someone with full blown autism with your inability to control your emotions.
Channing Tatum looked cool in this memorable Mountain Dew commercial back in 2002.
“Step Up” was decent.
He should change his name to “Chad” Tatum.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Reading a book a week reminds me of Woody Allen’s old clunky joke:
“I took a speed reading course. Then I read War and Peace in an hour. It’s about…Russia.”
Hey, maybe he’s re-reading it. I’ve read it at least twice. I could definitely reread Old Man and the Sea about now. Hemingway may have been an asshole, but that’s one beautiful piece of fiction.
As for dog fiction, I’m currently reading Where the Red Fern Grows — with my 8yo. It has finally convinced me to get the kid a puppy. We’re going to look at a litter today.
https://lexfridman.com/reading-list/Replies: @MGB, @duncsbaby, @J.Ross
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
There isn’t a single Victorian era novel by an British author in that list. And a lot of people with a reading habit in Mr. Sailer’s generation likely had read half those books by the time they turned twenty.
Perhaps this is a good time for the iSteve 50 or 100 books list.
As for dog fiction, I'm currently reading Where the Red Fern Grows -- with my 8yo. It has finally convinced me to get the kid a puppy. We're going to look at a litter today.Replies: @HammerJack, @MEH 0910
Please consider a shelter. Breeders are the Spawn of Satan. No matter what they tell you, they are motivated by money alone, and every single breed has been mangled.
I also recommend: a big, fenced yard, and a large loving family. And it’s a 15-year commitment±. Finally, since you asked 😉 do the bonding well before you start any training.
FIFY
The girlfriend is on her third dog in 40 years, all the same breed from the same family in Kentucky. First lived 18 years, the second, 15, and the third is a very frisky 7 years old.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
What boring drama. Pseudointellectuals all the way down.
Please elaborate on the Blattman book. Sounds interesting.
So, the real question is: why do attempts to avoid war sometimes fail?
Blattman approaches the question from a game-theoretic perspective -- incentives, strategy, asymmetric information, etc. -- but he goes lightly on the theory. He does a nice job of focusing on actual cases of violent conflict and on what went wrong to lead to violence.
He does deal with obvious issues outside game theory in the narrow sense -- e.g., psychological motivations.
The main point on which I would differ with him is he says that a strong state is a good way to avoid civil war.
Yes, but... sometimes a strong and overbearing state is what leads to rebellion. And sometimes it is strong states that start wars with other states.
Anyway, the book has no big message to sell except that it is good to try to understand what starts wars in the hope that we can avoid them.
It is quite readable, given that it is a non-fiction book on a serious subject.
Hope this gives you the info you want.Replies: @J.Ross
Still trying to determine if that’s a good or bad idea.
Another flick where the team can’t think of anything deep to say, so they feature a cripple, no make that a cripple and a crippled dog (good grief) to substitute for depth.
I am of two minds about the damaged veteran trope: On the one hand it’s embarrassing to watch what used to be a point of pride curdle into a whimper for pity and hand-0uts.
On the other hand it is truly shameful that the country destroyed and wrecked so may young lives in pointless wars that we couldn’t be bothered to win. Even worse, as Ukraine is demonstrating, the politicians and banksters don’t even have the wits or wisdom to avoid another pointless war.
If Hollywood had any soul they would make a movie to shame the Neo-cons and turn the country against all the endless, counter-productive meddling. Or how about a movie about a veteran who comes home to find his hometown over-run by illegals and amnesty scammers.
There you go: An ex-Army ranger from Lewiston, Maine, who comes home from Mogodishu, after watching his buddy’s body dragged through the streets, beaten on by cheering mobs of young Somalis. He comes home and finds his parents house surrounded by overcrowded apartments of pregnant, haughty Somali women in hajibs… Based on a real-life story.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
The MORE tag is always applicable.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Mocking someone for wanting to plug the holes in his reading is what seems midwit.
I tried listening to Fridman's podcast but can't tolerate his dreary voice. Regrettably, I have a similar problem with Glenn Greenwald, whom I greatly respect and to whose Substack I have subscribed. He's now doing regular newscasts and his nasal, stressed-sounding voice is not pleasant to listen to. Dan Bongino gets so worked up talking about the news that I don't think it's good for my blood pressure to listen to him. I'm impressed that the "Red Scare" girls frequently mention Steve Sailer and race realism, but they annoy me with their vocal fry and constant laughing at their own remarks. They sound very sexy though and I can understand guys getting off on it. My favorite podcast is the weekly summation of the news by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. They maintain a detached, somewhat amused manner while discussing the current mess.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZY-NI9knw
Jan 8, 2023Excerpted from:1984 by George Orwell | Lex Fridman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sk6lTLSZcA
Jan 8, 2023Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
He gave one heck of a performance as a “bottom” on a leash in the comedy movie The End. I mean, he looks like he belongs in our modern Pentagon!
Go USA!
Yeah, most seem like high school tier. On the other hand, digest The Art of War and Brothers Karamazov in one week each … lol.
Anybody got any views on which translation?Replies: @JimDandy
Among other “year in review” pieces,
this one must provide everybody some reason for scorn.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/pornhubs-year-review-reveals-darkest-and-dirtiest-searches
I’m about to embark on a re-read for the first time in forty years of Dostoevsky’s Devils. I’ve got the one I’ve read somewhere but am too idle to hunt it down or dig it up.
Anybody got any views on which translation?
“However, when Lulu’s handler, an old war buddy of Tatum’s, drives into a tree at 120 mph, the officer offers to sign Tatum’s form if he will get the hero dog / crazed beast to New Mexico in five days for the handler’s funeral.”
so it’s a remake of smokey and the bandit. or perhaps midnight run?
Even if none were rereads, so what? Sure, you can’t digest Dostoyevsky in a week.
Mocking someone for wanting to plug the holes in his reading is what seems midwit.
Speaking of British authors, he could add one of Graham Greene’s meatier novels, just to observe a master at work. Or if he does Lowry’s Under the Volcano we’ll give him a mulligan and let him skip the 60-page forward.
Fridman glows in daylight but this list isn’t a bad list if you to podcast about classics. Is this really supposed to be a personal reading list (of books he hasn’t read before), and not a program for his podcast?
I noticed that. Dune in a week. I wonder if he just took titles from some top 10 list (all those sci-fi titles are in the same “top 50” that I found as a set of audiobooks; similarly the classics are something you’d get from a top 10 list). There are great classics which are very short, but the way he has them jumbled, and all assogned the same amount of time …
I can’t do dog movies, I get too emotional. Even old Lassie episodes are problematic — Gramps can just fend for himself at the bottom of that well.
As for dog fiction, I'm currently reading Where the Red Fern Grows -- with my 8yo. It has finally convinced me to get the kid a puppy. We're going to look at a litter today.Replies: @HammerJack, @MEH 0910
Lex Fridman is considering adding that one to his reading list:
https://lexfridman.com/reading-list/
https://storage.googleapis.com/hipcomic/p/2795191c422db7cda93549305be30e08.jpgReplies: @Ray P
https://lexfridman.com/reading-list/Replies: @MGB, @duncsbaby, @J.Ross
HG Wells, ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’. Fabian socialists torturing those they seek to civilize.
I don’t disagree, but in some areas it can be remarkably difficult to find a shelter with a number of pups that lack any ancestry from the bully breeds.
And shelters are generally very strict about this, because they will get sued.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Taleb, while not an idiot, is a fool. I respect Dave Pinsen and appreciate his comments on iSteve. However, I suspect both of them have not discerned Lex Fridman’s intentions. I don’t pretend to know what it is, but I would point out that a public reading list that invites others to read along is quite a different thing from a private list of interests.
Taleb = 🤡
“How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler (and revised) (or the like; there are many) is a good place for a kid (of any age?) to start. Otherwise, the kid better have the Sparknotes nearby to understand what the heck is going on. In my small English Lit class in college there was a guy who could really weave those webs. When the departments gave out the prizes, upon graduation, for best student, he won the Lit prize. He didn’t need the Adler-type book. He was a natural. Hate me, troll me, but very few of us are that guy.
Well, the Little Prince will give her a chance to catch up to her schedule.
Kohberg, alleged killer of four Idaho college students, was a registered Libertarian.
https://aynrand.no/did-ayn-rand-admire-killer-william-hickman/
Ayn Rand on her idealized killer:
I saw this billboard today:
The bitchy, snippy tone doesn’t inspire much sympathy. It conjures up an image of a Karen Kohen type wagging her finger in your face: “Three of my grandparents died at Auschwitz, so don’t call me a stuck-up bitch!”
Shame them back.
To work for a Blackwater type organization these days you would need a moral lobotomy.
‘Operator Culture’ has fallen from grace these days, as the accusations of murder in Afghanistan pile up against Australian and British special forces. Then there is the Eddie Gallagher affair, the controversial commander Richard Marcinko and financial malfeasance in SEAL Team 6, and drug abuse and murder at Fort Bragg.
It’s nice to have a movie that celebrates the better nature of some of the SF guys, but they are not fully men if they don’t come to terms with the fact they are, as Smedley Butler put it, enforcers for a capitalist mafia. They are more like the simple hound, which is loyal and subservient to his master.
After military life, these guys often want to continue living the dream, as PMCs or feds, ready to use brawn as Pavlovian attack dogs.
That’s not the message which needs to be promoted these days. True heroes are the J6 prisoners rotting in jail, not the steroid monkey who would arrest them without question, or fight for Ukraine.
Maybe Hollywood would like to tackle the American Gulag? Didn’t think so.
budget TV commercials for best-selling books, including one of Marcinko's. They were filming on one of NYC's West-Side docks. Marcinko and a crew of actors playing SEALS, armed to the teeth, would secure the area and then Marcinko would snarl into the camera, "If you want to know how this turns out, read 'Red Cell.'" They had to wait until twilight to get the lighting they needed, so everyone was hanging around the set all afternoon. Marcinko showed up drunk, then retired to his trailer and continued to drink. The director chose to leave him alone, but there was a young woman on the set who was anxious to meet him. She timidly knocked on the door of his trailer, entered and said, "Mr. Marcinko, I wanted to meet you because my father served with you in Vietnam. His name is Peter Murphy. I'm Colleen Murphy." [Not actual names.]Marcinko said, "Peter Murphy? I remember him. Shit, you're Murph's kid?""Yes, I am," she answered. "He always talked about you. Ever since I was a kid I heard about you.""Holy shit. Murph. Old Murph. And you're his kid," said Marcinko. "Incredible. Say, you know what Colleen? There's something you could do for me.""Really? What's that?" she asked."If you'd just bend over that desk there, I think I have time to fuck you before we shoot this commercial."
https://aynrand.no/did-ayn-rand-admire-killer-william-hickman/
Ayn Rand on her idealized killer:Replies: @prosa123, @Reg Cæsar
Of course Reddit is full of people, I suspect mostly women, calling him an Incel and saying that’s why he did it. Leaving aside the fact that it’s women who are responsible for the increasing number of Incels, we don’t actually know if he was one.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Yuval Noah Harari? Klaus Schwab’s boot-licker? Please!
Fortunately, I saw it, recognized Harari's name and decided that I'd better take a read thorough myself to vet it. It's a very well put together work with a lot of pretty good material. There are quite a number of points that I agreed with wholeheartedly.
He approaches the norms and sacred cows of all historical periods with a detached irreverence...until he gets to the Woke dogma of the present day. Then it's all transgenders this and George Floyd that, blah blah blah. It's a slick piece of propaganda if you want your kids to be told how ignorant everyone was "back then" and how enlightened our attitudes are now. The first volume wasn't bad but the last part of the second volume was pure poison, the effect of which is made worse by how slickly packaged and authoritative the work appears up that point.
Needless to say, I made my wife aware of what they really were and she packed them right back off to the library.
The takeaway is that you have to vet every damn thing these days!Replies: @RSDB
Didn’t every Boomer and later HS kid in the US read 1984 and The Great Gatsby? I mean, the ones that could read. Have they been dropped from the curriculum to make room for Toni Morrison and T’Sneezy Coates?
1.SELECT FEW Boomers read 1984 and Great Gatsby complete and unabridged
2.ALL Boomers who managed to graduate from HS read 1984 & Great Gatsby Cliffs Notes
Now that the Statute of Limitations is expired I can probably confess to #1...
Yet back then to be branded as a Nerd or an Egghead was no fun, no fun at all...
Being L7 (aka Square aka Square from Delaware) was not so bad if one was a Jock at the same time.
I hated school and would daydream about running off and living in the woods like in my favorite childhood novel My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who does so after reading Thoreau. I happened to live across the road from a huge, wooded area covering several hundred acres and would spend hours roaming it with my collie dog and those were the happiest hours of my childhood. People often say Atlas Shrugged turns people into libertarians but my exposure to these early influences combined with my hatred of government schools did it for me before I even discovered Ayn Rand.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @HammerJack, @Twinkie
Many military dogs made the ultimate sacrifice, for example “clearing a building” and taking the blast, saving human lives. During the Vietnam era, the military dogs were left behind. This was shameful. Fortunately, things are different now. Almost all military dogs are retired to their new job, patrolling their handler’s house and yard, then taking a nap on the couch. The rest of the dogs are adopted by U.S. people other than the handler. This process costs money, and there are donation opportunities, especially on veterans holidays. Thanks for calling attention to this film, Steve.
Reading lists?
Boomers get excited about this? What’s on or not on? Books?
Today’s kids won’t read anything longer than it takes in fifteen minutes on a very tiny cell screen.
So in 30 years they will be blind as well as ignorant and undoubtedly, stupid…
But in 30 years, that’s not a problem you need to worry about.
The one shortcoming of the movie is that Belgian Malinois dogs have fairly dark faces and dark eyes, so they aren’t all that charismatic on camera.
Korean Jindos on the other hand…… Who would have thought Steve would turn into a Hollywood stage ‘parent’?
That’s a little like saying that there is no right side of the road to drive on or there is no right language to speak. It’s not false, but it’s also not true.
Thanks for mentioning Peebles’ book. Looks interesting. I will read.
Indeed, a month or so ago, a commenter here informed me that Lenny Susskind, who was on my thesis committee, is coming out with a popular book on General Relativity. Since I am writing a book on the same subject, this was crucial information for me to have, and I am indebted to that commenter.
What I am objecting to is the sort of silly stuff like "50 books every educated person should read." Yes, I actually do think people should read 1984, mainly because the warning it gives is so important.
But while I read and enjoyed Huck Finn, The Odyssey, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I am reluctant to say that a person is culturally stunted if they not have read those three books. (Incidentally, Harper Lee was most assuredly not a liberal. Read her first book: Go Set a Watchman. She was a libertarian conservative, a self-conscious limited-government, states-rights Jeffersonian.)
This is even more so with non-fiction books. I could name a number of non-fiction books that were critical for me in understanding reality better. But, in almost all cases there are other books that could serve almost as well.Replies: @Bill
Adler was Auster before Auster:
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
I wonder why Lex Fridman is being pushed so much, I am completely stumped, his early life section has nothing remarkable. I suppose it will remain a mystery.
Back in the day, if you wanted a federal job, the civil service gave you a test. (I used it a couple of times for summer jobs and an internship at NASA after graduation.) Then there was a 5 pt, “veteran’s preference” and a 10 pt. “disabled veteran’s preference” that could be tacked on top.
I have some foggy memory that some whiny XX bureaucrat decided it was unfair that veterans were getting a leg up over her because of their military service which was overwhelmingly male. And sued for sex discrimination and … heck if I know what happened after that. So no idea how it works now.
But under that system, this pretty much guaranteed that any disabled veteran who hadn’t been reduced to vegetable could find some sort of federal employment doing something within his capability.
Of course, even better … not having stupid wars that kill/maim good young men.
Winnie, the Ontarian black bear named for her adoptive Winnipeg regiment, and the inspiration for you-know-whom, was left at the London Zoo. They didn’t think she could bear the strains of war on the Continent. She flourished therein for 19 years.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Could we agree to limit comments to say no more than 6″ of twitter grab and two annoying videos?
~~
As to content: Dude can read whatever he wants, but it strikes me a pretty boring list. (A bunch of it I’ve read and most of the rest not what I’d want to read now. Though I still haven’t read Sun Tzu.)
Like a lot of older men, my tastes now run much more to non-fiction and actually learning something. If commenters want to offer their recommendations, especially in the history and general “how we got here” space I’ll take note.
~~
As to content: Dude can read whatever he wants, but it strikes me a pretty boring list. (A bunch of it I've read and most of the rest not what I'd want to read now. Though I still haven't read Sun Tzu.)
Like a lot of older men, my tastes now run much more to non-fiction and actually learning something. If commenters want to offer their recommendations, especially in the history and general "how we got here" space I'll take note.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Twinkie
Depends on context and content. In this case, I gave those with an itchy scroll finger a heads-up. For it all to flow, the full layout was necessary.
AD, if you played the second Youtube video (outro cued) and weren’t vibing, something’s wrong. 😐 Those videos were posted meta-tangentially as part of an on-and-off friendly debate about music between me and Dave Pinsen.
Don’t forget the follow-up, “How to Read Two Books.”
Some breeders are the Spawn of Satan.
FIFY
The girlfriend is on her third dog in 40 years, all the same breed from the same family in Kentucky. First lived 18 years, the second, 15, and the third is a very frisky 7 years old.
I don’t know what knowledge is contained in a specific book until I read it. And, since there are very often multiple books that purport to explain the same subject, trustworthy advice on which ones to try first can be valuable. Of course, if the book is within one’s field of expertise, such advice may not be needed. But, I sometimes wander away from the range of my expertise and, on occasion, I’m lucky enough to find reliable signposts. An example: “The Nuclear Express”–a history of global nuclear weapons proliferation recommended by a couple of physicists. Reviews/critiques can also be useful for the intellectual interloper, as they put a book in context. Professors have syllabi in which they mandate the reading of certain material, implicitly excluding the rest as less suitable for their students. All of this applies to books that are truth seeking. For literature, the criteria are different, lists of recent books less useful–although the Western Canon is highly useful for filtering older works.
Now I think of it, a list of subjects that are ignored or maligned in mainstream education might be more generally useful than a book list. I consider it abstractly good for me that I at least know these subjects exist. While swimming with the academic fish, I had scarcely heard of the dark school of psychometricians, and, when I did catch a glimpse at the edge, it was dismissed as low status or pseudoscience. Only when I found dry land and clambered my amphibian self out of the obscure depths did I discovered Psychometrics and its significance for “Understanding Human History” (another book discovered by recommendation). Propaganda is also a subject. It ought to be recognized as such, all the more so given the increasing asymmetry in power between the masses and the propaganda machines. Another: Practical Reasoning (should replace the typical intro to stats course, but run for at least two semesters). Logic and logical fallacies. Anti-Metaphysics, a subject designed to cure the temptation to squander time in the wasteland of metaphysics. Realpolitik–something you get little taste of even if you take a BA in polisci. Not unrelated, but studiously ignored: Military History. History of Science and Technology. The Nature of Economic Systems, with historical illustrations of each in action. I have met middle-aged and elderly people, formally “educated,” who do not realize that these are real subjects of inquiry in which some knowledge has been attained. The mind control institutions prefer it should be so. I know this is nuts: I’m imagining a functional education system in a functional country.
Steve, how about an open thread for people to make subject/book suggestions?
This is one of the central reasons libraries are so important: I probably check out ten times as many books from the library as I end up reading cover to cover. (Why don't I just browse in the library? Because the Sacramento library is a medium-size library, but we have a fantastic, free inter-library loan system spanning much of California. So, to "browse" a book, I basically have to order it on inter-library loan.)
And I probably start reading -- at least ten or twenty pages -- three times as many books as I end up reading cover to cover.
Craken also wrote:Indeed. Again, the nice things about libraries is that librarians do still tend to stock books that interest only a few people, indeed books that would offend many people.
Craken also wrote:Yeah. The problem of course is that you can earn a BA in economics at a good university and never learn how and why Hayek showed that socialism cannot work (the so-called "socialism calculation debate" -- see, for example, Don Lavoie's Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered ).
Current-day academia is not very good at passing on accumulated human knowledge. The knowledge, however, is there in libraries, but it takes some searching to find it.
I’m basically uninterested in the dog. It is after all, a dog. I saw “The Incredible Journey” as a kid. I think that has me covered. A few years later I saw some movie that was about a woman’s love affair with a lion. It was nice. (Spoiler: they went their separate speciesist ways in the end. “Separation” the best policy.) But I think I’d rather see movies about people. That said, I can live with the unphotogenic dog if necessary to see a good movie.
The question for all movies these days is whether they have annoying jammed superfluous/discordant/anachronistic/annoying blacks into it rendering it–whatever its other merits–unwatchable.
Past the inevitable token, if there're blacks in it, I won't watch it.
Post-Summer of George, it's a matter of principle. They started a race war, and I'd no more watch a movie with blacks in it now than I would check out Goebbel's latest offering if it were 1943.
Seriously. My daughter recommended the recent remake of Dune. My first -- and only -- question was 'Are the Fremen black?'
'Yes.' Then I won't watch it. Ten years ago -- sure. Now? No.Replies: @Steve Sailer
My wife grabbed Harari’s “Sapiens” from the library for the kids to check out. She thought it looked like a neat “sciency” read.
Fortunately, I saw it, recognized Harari’s name and decided that I’d better take a read thorough myself to vet it. It’s a very well put together work with a lot of pretty good material. There are quite a number of points that I agreed with wholeheartedly.
He approaches the norms and sacred cows of all historical periods with a detached irreverence…until he gets to the Woke dogma of the present day. Then it’s all transgenders this and George Floyd that, blah blah blah. It’s a slick piece of propaganda if you want your kids to be told how ignorant everyone was “back then” and how enlightened our attitudes are now. The first volume wasn’t bad but the last part of the second volume was pure poison, the effect of which is made worse by how slickly packaged and authoritative the work appears up that point.
Needless to say, I made my wife aware of what they really were and she packed them right back off to the library.
The takeaway is that you have to vet every damn thing these days!
I think the booklet had the rather unfortunate title of Jewish Fables, but that's Jones for you.
Harari is probably a good historian and he has a knack for bold pronouncements but he seems to have very little philosophical acumen and tends not to think through his own statements with any particular care.Replies: @Barbarossa
Funny enough the late Prof. Ralph McInerny was friends with Unz’s own E. Michael Jones and gave Jones money* to keep Jones’ Fidelity Press running (according to Jones’ book Logos Rising [Fidelity Press, 2020]).
*McInerny got rich from his Father Dowling mysteries being made into a television show.
If he didn’t want to be mocked, he should have made it clear that he’d read a number of the books previously. It does look like one of those summer reading lists they used to give us in high school.
I tried listening to Fridman’s podcast but can’t tolerate his dreary voice. Regrettably, I have a similar problem with Glenn Greenwald, whom I greatly respect and to whose Substack I have subscribed. He’s now doing regular newscasts and his nasal, stressed-sounding voice is not pleasant to listen to. Dan Bongino gets so worked up talking about the news that I don’t think it’s good for my blood pressure to listen to him. I’m impressed that the “Red Scare” girls frequently mention Steve Sailer and race realism, but they annoy me with their vocal fry and constant laughing at their own remarks. They sound very sexy though and I can understand guys getting off on it. My favorite podcast is the weekly summation of the news by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. They maintain a detached, somewhat amused manner while discussing the current mess.
https://twitter.com/nobody_stop_me/status/1609940904328011780
https://twitter.com/annakhachiyan/status/1606723304429359104
Little Wally/Walt/Wat would have bought his bubble gum at one of America's last genuine 19th-century general stores, in operation to this day.https://i1.wp.com/www.twincities.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/the-wagon-004.jpgSeems kind of strange to see a Walter born in 1962. I think Kirn is a junior. Another Minnesotan Walter, the dentist who shot Cecil in Africa, was born about the same time. Not many "boomers" carry the name, let alone late ones.https://engaging-data.com/baby-name-visualizer/?n=walter&sex=m&data=n
ot: kinda debunks a lot of false narratives we’ve been forced to accept all of our lives, and likely a better film than magic mikes attempt to be a serious actor.
The Stigler-Brown Incident Animation
the controversial commander Richard Marcinko
When I was in the ad business, I worked with a director who started out shooting low
budget TV commercials for best-selling books, including one of Marcinko’s. They were filming on one of NYC’s West-Side docks. Marcinko and a crew of actors playing SEALS, armed to the teeth, would secure the area and then Marcinko would snarl into the camera, “If you want to know how this turns out, read ‘Red Cell.’”
They had to wait until twilight to get the lighting they needed, so everyone was hanging around the set all afternoon. Marcinko showed up drunk, then retired to his trailer and continued to drink. The director chose to leave him alone, but there was a young woman on the set who was anxious to meet him. She timidly knocked on the door of his trailer, entered and said, “Mr. Marcinko, I wanted to meet you because my father served with you in Vietnam. His name is Peter Murphy. I’m Colleen Murphy.” [Not actual names.]
Marcinko said, “Peter Murphy? I remember him. Shit, you’re Murph’s kid?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered. “He always talked about you. Ever since I was a kid I heard about you.”
“Holy shit. Murph. Old Murph. And you’re his kid,” said Marcinko. “Incredible. Say, you know what Colleen? There’s something you could do for me.”
“Really? What’s that?” she asked.
“If you’d just bend over that desk there, I think I have time to fuck you before we shoot this commercial.”
I tried listening to Fridman's podcast but can't tolerate his dreary voice. Regrettably, I have a similar problem with Glenn Greenwald, whom I greatly respect and to whose Substack I have subscribed. He's now doing regular newscasts and his nasal, stressed-sounding voice is not pleasant to listen to. Dan Bongino gets so worked up talking about the news that I don't think it's good for my blood pressure to listen to him. I'm impressed that the "Red Scare" girls frequently mention Steve Sailer and race realism, but they annoy me with their vocal fry and constant laughing at their own remarks. They sound very sexy though and I can understand guys getting off on it. My favorite podcast is the weekly summation of the news by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. They maintain a detached, somewhat amused manner while discussing the current mess.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar
Their flirting is relentless !
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
I publicly committed to reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, but between friends, I had to set it aside five pages in, because I find I’m having to devote all my free time to tweeting about numerous memes that I do not wholly agree with.
The show was on the air for < 2 seasons. It's a reasonable wager McInerney was wealthy from his popular books. He was extraordinarily prolific. Jones began going off the rails before McInerney died.
-Didn’t every Boomer read…-
1.SELECT FEW Boomers read 1984 and Great Gatsby complete and unabridged
2.ALL Boomers who managed to graduate from HS read 1984 & Great Gatsby Cliffs Notes
Now that the Statute of Limitations is expired I can probably confess to #1…
Yet back then to be branded as a Nerd or an Egghead was no fun, no fun at all…
Being L7 (aka Square aka Square from Delaware) was not so bad if one was a Jock at the same time.
Yep. I volunteer at my local shelter and the majority of dogs are at least part pit bull. I had thought when I began volunteering that I would help with the dogs but, as someone with limited dog experience, I find the dogs too intimidating. So I just pet cats and bunnies.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Some of Lex’s books are good. I still need to read Brave New World.
The Bell Curve
Culture of Critique
Yggdrasil’s content
Early Steve Sailer highlights on HBD etc.
Those are probably the most influential books of my adult life. Also a chronological ordering of the Koran was worthwhile. I had to do it myself in the 2000 era; now it is done for you.
https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/chrono.htm
Also the Gulag Archipelago.
I think Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are also worth reading to understand events of the 20th century.
And as Steve says, read a proper multi-volume childrens’ encyclopaedia or 3 for good measure. Any recommendations there?
I tried listening to Fridman's podcast but can't tolerate his dreary voice. Regrettably, I have a similar problem with Glenn Greenwald, whom I greatly respect and to whose Substack I have subscribed. He's now doing regular newscasts and his nasal, stressed-sounding voice is not pleasant to listen to. Dan Bongino gets so worked up talking about the news that I don't think it's good for my blood pressure to listen to him. I'm impressed that the "Red Scare" girls frequently mention Steve Sailer and race realism, but they annoy me with their vocal fry and constant laughing at their own remarks. They sound very sexy though and I can understand guys getting off on it. My favorite podcast is the weekly summation of the news by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. They maintain a detached, somewhat amused manner while discussing the current mess.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Reg Cæsar
No surprise that that Kirn is detached– that describes his hometown enclave of Marine-on-St-Croix, wedged between a state park to the west, and a river to the east, across which is another state’s “state natural area”.
Little Wally/Walt/Wat would have bought his bubble gum at one of America’s last genuine 19th-century general stores, in operation to this day.
Seems kind of strange to see a Walter born in 1962. I think Kirn is a junior. Another Minnesotan Walter, the dentist who shot Cecil in Africa, was born about the same time. Not many “boomers” carry the name, let alone late ones.
https://engaging-data.com/baby-name-visualizer/?n=walter&sex=m&data=n
Now I think of it, a list of subjects that are ignored or maligned in mainstream education might be more generally useful than a book list. I consider it abstractly good for me that I at least know these subjects exist. While swimming with the academic fish, I had scarcely heard of the dark school of psychometricians, and, when I did catch a glimpse at the edge, it was dismissed as low status or pseudoscience. Only when I found dry land and clambered my amphibian self out of the obscure depths did I discovered Psychometrics and its significance for "Understanding Human History" (another book discovered by recommendation). Propaganda is also a subject. It ought to be recognized as such, all the more so given the increasing asymmetry in power between the masses and the propaganda machines. Another: Practical Reasoning (should replace the typical intro to stats course, but run for at least two semesters). Logic and logical fallacies. Anti-Metaphysics, a subject designed to cure the temptation to squander time in the wasteland of metaphysics. Realpolitik--something you get little taste of even if you take a BA in polisci. Not unrelated, but studiously ignored: Military History. History of Science and Technology. The Nature of Economic Systems, with historical illustrations of each in action. I have met middle-aged and elderly people, formally "educated," who do not realize that these are real subjects of inquiry in which some knowledge has been attained. The mind control institutions prefer it should be so. I know this is nuts: I'm imagining a functional education system in a functional country.Replies: @Rob, @PhysicistDave
Important subjects not taught would be a very interesting list. Think of it as Dark Arts/Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Steve, how about an open thread for people to make subject/book suggestions?
so it's a remake of smokey and the bandit. or perhaps midnight run?
https://youtu.be/8QAEmCuBnckReplies: @Wokechoke
Oliver Reed’s Hannibal Brooks…saving the elephant movie. Getting drunk with him must have been a laugh.
Taleb is an angry old man that fancies himself as philosopher and mathematician. 🤣
Taleb = 🤡
On cosmology, “Genesis” by Guido Tonelli, who works at CERN, came out in English not too long ago and is pretty good.
Anybody got any views on which translation?Replies: @JimDandy
I read Robert Maguire’s most recently–Penguin Classic. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be the best one, but it’s excellent, imo.
The Fat-Body Problem
Harry Potter and the Haunted Loo
Babar Gets Wrecked
Golf and the Art of War
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Forensics
How Uncanny Was My Valley (Lex Fridman, summer 2023)But seriously, posting reading lists or music playlists, etc. in public is risky business. Many people don’t know what they don’t know and reveal themselves to mentally inhabit Basic Bitch (NPC-adjacent) territory rather than being the public ‘intellectuals’ they think they are. End result: sketchy scores on the self-administered Voight-Kampff / Turing test, narrator: unreliable.https://twitter.com/MetaPrime001/status/1609694185766162432LOL:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1609751283119935490Dave Pinsen retweeted:https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1609713244436074496Bonus “stoner friendly” mirror images & sound smackdown:Dave, question— would one retweet this wan ‘90s-Madonna-tier murk …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU7k5RMnqY… if one knew the slammin’ outro below could exist? No, one would not.
https://youtu.be/wcf6iQDWPEo?t=164But to Mr. Pinsen’s credit, his retweet of the performance below was a great choice. Live David Byrne duets are perfect New Year’s Eve music.https://twitter.com/thebobferguson/status/1609418835681214467Replies: @PhysicistDave, @R.G. Camara, @PiltdownMan, @AndrewR, @HammerJack, @MEH 0910, @Chrisnonymous, @BB753, @neutral, @AnotherDad, @Rusty Tailgate, @Anonymous, @Ghost of Bull Moose
These are all good choices. I’d like to add:
How to Be an Auntie Racist by Ex Ibram Kendi
Do The First Thing That Pops Into Your Head by Malcolm Gladwell
My Lovely White Teef Bones
This Land is Our Land, Now Get Out Whitey: An Immigrant’s Eviction Notice by Suketu Mehta
Golf Course Design: Fascinating! by Steve Sailer
~~
As to content: Dude can read whatever he wants, but it strikes me a pretty boring list. (A bunch of it I've read and most of the rest not what I'd want to read now. Though I still haven't read Sun Tzu.)
Like a lot of older men, my tastes now run much more to non-fiction and actually learning something. If commenters want to offer their recommendations, especially in the history and general "how we got here" space I'll take note.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Twinkie
I suggest Samuel B Griffith’s translation of it highly, even though it’s fallen out of favor in recent years.
“I wonder why Lex Fridman is being pushed so much …”
I wonder why Yuval Noah Harari is being pushed so much by young intellectuals like Lex Fridman. Is nihilism still fashionable amongst the cosmopolitans? Or is it the thrill of being augmented and surveilled that floats their cookies? Such a bright future they prophesize (for them).
Dog racist!
Since you have a dog now (purportedly a Jindo-mix) and seem to be into dogs, might I recommend this?
“You have zero idea how aspergers you come across …”
“The Shimmery”
It’s a reboot of Rosemary’s Baby with Steve playing the roles of Mia Farrow’s husband and their baby. The devil will be played by the sleek, objectionable animal Steve picked up in Burbank.
Very concerning on MNF.
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/sports/football/nfl/bills/2023/01/03/damar-hamlin-injury-buffalo-bills-safety-collapses-after-tackle-bengals-tee-higgins/69771929007/
AndrewR asked me:
The central message of the book is that war is always costly for both sides (obviously true in the case of Ukraine, of course), and therefore both sides usually have an incentive to avoid war and usually do succeed in avoiding war.
So, the real question is: why do attempts to avoid war sometimes fail?
Blattman approaches the question from a game-theoretic perspective — incentives, strategy, asymmetric information, etc. — but he goes lightly on the theory. He does a nice job of focusing on actual cases of violent conflict and on what went wrong to lead to violence.
He does deal with obvious issues outside game theory in the narrow sense — e.g., psychological motivations.
The main point on which I would differ with him is he says that a strong state is a good way to avoid civil war.
Yes, but… sometimes a strong and overbearing state is what leads to rebellion. And sometimes it is strong states that start wars with other states.
Anyway, the book has no big message to sell except that it is good to try to understand what starts wars in the hope that we can avoid them.
It is quite readable, given that it is a non-fiction book on a serious subject.
Hope this gives you the info you want.
OT — It turns out that the Andrew Tate nonsense was to distract from a US Virgin Islands attorney general suing JP Morgan over a connection with Jeffrey Epstein, and promptly being fired without explanation.
https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/jeffrey-epstein/virgin-islands-attorney-general-loses-her-job-days-after-suing-jpmorgan-chase-in-connection-with-the-jeffrey-epstein-probe/
But hey, the Idaho police would’ve caught Kohberger much faster had he relied upon distinctive pizza boxes.
So, the real question is: why do attempts to avoid war sometimes fail?
Blattman approaches the question from a game-theoretic perspective -- incentives, strategy, asymmetric information, etc. -- but he goes lightly on the theory. He does a nice job of focusing on actual cases of violent conflict and on what went wrong to lead to violence.
He does deal with obvious issues outside game theory in the narrow sense -- e.g., psychological motivations.
The main point on which I would differ with him is he says that a strong state is a good way to avoid civil war.
Yes, but... sometimes a strong and overbearing state is what leads to rebellion. And sometimes it is strong states that start wars with other states.
Anyway, the book has no big message to sell except that it is good to try to understand what starts wars in the hope that we can avoid them.
It is quite readable, given that it is a non-fiction book on a serious subject.
Hope this gives you the info you want.Replies: @J.Ross
Interesting, but almost no one predicted a comic book level of evil in the form of a war lobby that literally works continually to neutralize the will of the people and start unnecessary wars, let alone one that jumps parties when convenient. Voting cannot remove the unelected.
And of course that very ability to forget one of the central themes of 1984 actually validates the central message of 1984, doesn't it?
Any chance we could ever get Corvinus, Jack D, HAsbara, et al. to grasp this?
At all?Replies: @J.Ross
Now I think of it, a list of subjects that are ignored or maligned in mainstream education might be more generally useful than a book list. I consider it abstractly good for me that I at least know these subjects exist. While swimming with the academic fish, I had scarcely heard of the dark school of psychometricians, and, when I did catch a glimpse at the edge, it was dismissed as low status or pseudoscience. Only when I found dry land and clambered my amphibian self out of the obscure depths did I discovered Psychometrics and its significance for "Understanding Human History" (another book discovered by recommendation). Propaganda is also a subject. It ought to be recognized as such, all the more so given the increasing asymmetry in power between the masses and the propaganda machines. Another: Practical Reasoning (should replace the typical intro to stats course, but run for at least two semesters). Logic and logical fallacies. Anti-Metaphysics, a subject designed to cure the temptation to squander time in the wasteland of metaphysics. Realpolitik--something you get little taste of even if you take a BA in polisci. Not unrelated, but studiously ignored: Military History. History of Science and Technology. The Nature of Economic Systems, with historical illustrations of each in action. I have met middle-aged and elderly people, formally "educated," who do not realize that these are real subjects of inquiry in which some knowledge has been attained. The mind control institutions prefer it should be so. I know this is nuts: I'm imagining a functional education system in a functional country.Replies: @Rob, @PhysicistDave
Craken wrote to me:
The “paradox of information”: it is very difficult to evaluate the value of information until you have the information and have internalized it.
This is one of the central reasons libraries are so important: I probably check out ten times as many books from the library as I end up reading cover to cover. (Why don’t I just browse in the library? Because the Sacramento library is a medium-size library, but we have a fantastic, free inter-library loan system spanning much of California. So, to “browse” a book, I basically have to order it on inter-library loan.)
And I probably start reading — at least ten or twenty pages — three times as many books as I end up reading cover to cover.
Craken also wrote:
Indeed. Again, the nice things about libraries is that librarians do still tend to stock books that interest only a few people, indeed books that would offend many people.
Craken also wrote:
Yeah. The problem of course is that you can earn a BA in economics at a good university and never learn how and why Hayek showed that socialism cannot work (the so-called “socialism calculation debate” — see, for example, Don Lavoie’s Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered ).
Current-day academia is not very good at passing on accumulated human knowledge. The knowledge, however, is there in libraries, but it takes some searching to find it.
Thanks for mentioning Peebles' book. Looks interesting. I will read.Replies: @PhysicistDave
Bill wrote to me:
Well, obviously, I am not objecting to people recommending books!
Indeed, a month or so ago, a commenter here informed me that Lenny Susskind, who was on my thesis committee, is coming out with a popular book on General Relativity. Since I am writing a book on the same subject, this was crucial information for me to have, and I am indebted to that commenter.
What I am objecting to is the sort of silly stuff like “50 books every educated person should read.” Yes, I actually do think people should read 1984, mainly because the warning it gives is so important.
But while I read and enjoyed Huck Finn, The Odyssey, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I am reluctant to say that a person is culturally stunted if they not have read those three books. (Incidentally, Harper Lee was most assuredly not a liberal. Read her first book: Go Set a Watchman. She was a libertarian conservative, a self-conscious limited-government, states-rights Jeffersonian.)
This is even more so with non-fiction books. I could name a number of non-fiction books that were critical for me in understanding reality better. But, in almost all cases there are other books that could serve almost as well.
Not only is it critical that you drive on the same side of the road as everyone else and speak the same language as everyone else, but it is also critical that there be a side of the road everyone drives on and a language everyone speaks. Disaster would ensue if there were not.
And disaster has ensued in the US because there are not 50 books every educated person has read (and all the stuff which goes along with that). Our hideous, thin, ugly, utterly amoral, low-context culture is the disaster.
I'm certainly not defending the list Fridman posted, by the way, which looks like something Vox Dei would come up with (well, except it doesn't have a strategy guide to Advanced Squad Leader on it).
Since you have a dog now (purportedly a Jindo-mix) and seem to be into dogs, might I recommend this?
https://youtu.be/TIl2o1hm1F4Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Dog = God.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf-4MrCEdTU
https://media.nbcmiami.com/2022/12/Miami.Okeechobee-e1671204353387.jpg
The bitchy, snippy tone doesn't inspire much sympathy. It conjures up an image of a Karen Kohen type wagging her finger in your face: "Three of my grandparents died at Auschwitz, so don't call me a stuck-up bitch!"Replies: @Veteran Aryan, @Beavertales
“We are not the people who ran the gas chambers, we are the people who came and shut them down. Thanks for your gratitude.”
Shame them back.
OT – Scott Adams is threatening to sue Ben Garrison and pro-vaxxers are tweeting no matter what happens, it’s the thought that counts. How’s everything going on the vaccine front?
https://metatron.substack.com/p/the-dam-is-breaking
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-trainwreck-of-all-trainwrecks-billions-of-people-stuck-with-a-broken-immune-response/
How to Be an Auntie Racist by Ex Ibram Kendi
Do The First Thing That Pops Into Your Head by Malcolm Gladwell
My Lovely White Teef Bones
This Land is Our Land, Now Get Out Whitey: An Immigrant's Eviction Notice by Suketu Mehta
Golf Course Design: Fascinating! by Steve SailerReplies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
I’ll buy that one for the coffee table, but I may skip the rest. Too busy!
https://media.nbcmiami.com/2022/12/Miami.Okeechobee-e1671204353387.jpg
The bitchy, snippy tone doesn't inspire much sympathy. It conjures up an image of a Karen Kohen type wagging her finger in your face: "Three of my grandparents died at Auschwitz, so don't call me a stuck-up bitch!"Replies: @Veteran Aryan, @Beavertales
Why were these billboards popping up in American and Canadian cities in 2022, and who is bankrolling them?
Since you have a dog now (purportedly a Jindo-mix) and seem to be into dogs, might I recommend this?
https://youtu.be/TIl2o1hm1F4Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Nice. I’ve read about Hachi in Hachette Filipacchi (Smelle magazine).
https://aynrand.no/did-ayn-rand-admire-killer-william-hickman/
Ayn Rand on her idealized killer:Replies: @prosa123, @Reg Cæsar
Murder would seem to violate the non-aggression principle. Perhaps he’s an anarchocapitalist, who flunked his business courses.
But his car was one of the first things noticed and discussed when bits of information became available. If he was a Stayvon attempting a perfect crime and then gets caught because he used his own car, he's probably going to be mad.Replies: @HammerJack
OT & Too Soon?
A Jeremiad of Dunces
Rumor has it that Jeremy Renner* turned down the role later filled by Channing Tatum in The Dog so that he (Jeremy) could star in the upcoming “Snow Pierce” Plowman. When asked by a reporter, who had somehow gotten to his hospital bedside, if he had made a career mistake, the delirious and heavily medicated actor gasped, “You’re a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!”
* “The Yiddish surname Renner is based on the German Renner, which means ‘runner/messenger.’ Another German Jewish surname with the same meaning is Laufer.” Jeremy Renner is not Jewish, but I’ll buy the rest of the above and assume that “Laufman” rhymes with “Kaufman.” A World War I folk etymology from the 24th Century asserts a similar definition for “Hitler.”
Also see: Jeremy Irons will star in a sequel as an aged and rusty Ferrous Bueller
See also: In celebration of the purported effects of an estimated 5% component of Sub-Saharan ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews, Jack D. will be writing a biography of the indicted “horndog” Ron “Unz” Jeremy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Renner
J.Ross wrote to me:
Well, of course, Orwelll actually did predict that in 1984:
And yet most people who have read 1984 have just chucked that into the memory hole: they remember the surveillance state, the falsification of history, etc., but they forget that one of the major themes of the novel is the use of perpetual war as a means of controlling the populace.
And of course that very ability to forget one of the central themes of 1984 actually validates the central message of 1984, doesn’t it?
Any chance we could ever get Corvinus, Jack D, HAsbara, et al. to grasp this?
At all?
You have zero idea of how the movie business works when criticizing Steve’s rather astute observation, don’t you?
First, I’ve been in the movie business. Dogs with dark fur are generally not considered whatsoever because of they are a pain in the ass to light. Audiences, as Steve noticed of his own accord, like to see a dog’s face.
Second, I was asked more than once to consider auditioning my own dog, a dark-haired mid-sized “Benji” type, as the casting person noticed she was very bright and wonderfully tempered, but only if I’d consider dying her hair a lighter shade, for the reason stated above.
I always declined. Didn’t want to put her through it, and I didn’t want to deal.
Dark-haired dogs can get cast, but it’s the exception, not the rule.
Finally, I noticed in a few key scenes in that movie, they lit the shit out of that dog. Particularly one of the last shots of the two out on the cliff out over the ocean. A couple of shots were even overexposed—to light up the dog for the ending, doing it in such a way that it looked “artistic,” but the technical intent was to light that dog up.
They had a very good cinematographer, who had his hands full with that dog, and did a great job.
And finally… shut the fuck up.
Or he’s a Chicago economist who reckons that the victims could have paid him to refrain from the massacre. /s
1984 really had an impact on me when I read it as a sixteen-year-old. It involved a man who lived in a society where he was constantly watched, there seemed no chance of escape, and he was not treated as an individual. I identified with that character because that is how I felt in my large public school. For the same reason I had earlier identified with the main character in the sixties tv series The Prisoner.
I hated school and would daydream about running off and living in the woods like in my favorite childhood novel My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who does so after reading Thoreau. I happened to live across the road from a huge, wooded area covering several hundred acres and would spend hours roaming it with my collie dog and those were the happiest hours of my childhood. People often say Atlas Shrugged turns people into libertarians but my exposure to these early influences combined with my hatred of government schools did it for me before I even discovered Ayn Rand.
https://lexfridman.com/reading-list/Replies: @MGB, @duncsbaby, @J.Ross
Where’s my fave?
I hated school and would daydream about running off and living in the woods like in my favorite childhood novel My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who does so after reading Thoreau. I happened to live across the road from a huge, wooded area covering several hundred acres and would spend hours roaming it with my collie dog and those were the happiest hours of my childhood. People often say Atlas Shrugged turns people into libertarians but my exposure to these early influences combined with my hatred of government schools did it for me before I even discovered Ayn Rand.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @HammerJack, @Twinkie
My Side of the Mountain
I’m wondering whether I read “Where the Red Fern Grows” or “My Side of the Mountain.”
WTF? What do you think a a criticism is?
And of course that very ability to forget one of the central themes of 1984 actually validates the central message of 1984, doesn't it?
Any chance we could ever get Corvinus, Jack D, HAsbara, et al. to grasp this?
At all?Replies: @J.Ross
Sort of, but Stalinists and neocons have different motives and work differently.
https://lexfridman.com/reading-list/Replies: @MGB, @duncsbaby, @J.Ross
The Nose and The Overcoat are each short stories (presumably this is an anthology?). The Giver is literally a children’s or young adult book. The Four Questions by Ruiz is self-help twaddle, a hair better than Deepak Chopra. And — On Writing By Stephen King? Ha ha ha ha, very amusing, now please face the wall.
He may be totally innocent but a lot has already come out suggesting he was studying crime with perfection and not prevention in mind. He may have felt that “country club” resentment: a call to a local podcast claimed to be him goes out of its way to plant the idea that the killing was a frat hazing gone wrong, because after all fratboys are bad. There’s a Daily Mail story claiming he did some big talk short of confessing while in jail.
But his car was one of the first things noticed and discussed when bits of information became available. If he was a Stayvon attempting a perfect crime and then gets caught because he used his own car, he’s probably going to be mad.
I read “On Writing” by Stephen King. It’s a good self-help book for writers by a guy who has made more money writing than just about any other American writer.
>make money
Oh that's right, you don't want your writing to result in the extrajudicial death of unelected bureaucrats.
https://storage.googleapis.com/hipcomic/p/2795191c422db7cda93549305be30e08.jpgReplies: @Ray P
Wolf yodels are now illegal in the U.K.
You seem pretty upset by someone focusing on your life’s work.
Without stepping in any more of the dog doo, can you refute Pat Hannagan’s comment?
I hated school and would daydream about running off and living in the woods like in my favorite childhood novel My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who does so after reading Thoreau. I happened to live across the road from a huge, wooded area covering several hundred acres and would spend hours roaming it with my collie dog and those were the happiest hours of my childhood. People often say Atlas Shrugged turns people into libertarians but my exposure to these early influences combined with my hatred of government schools did it for me before I even discovered Ayn Rand.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @HammerJack, @Twinkie
That actually sounds pretty wonderful, and I congratulate you for finding that respite.
But his car was one of the first things noticed and discussed when bits of information became available. If he was a Stayvon attempting a perfect crime and then gets caught because he used his own car, he's probably going to be mad.Replies: @HammerJack
Good point about the car. I’m still mystified by the whole story. What was he doing and why? Why did he choose those victims?
How and why did he execute his plan in a place and time where he stood a very good chance of discovery? He could hardly have planned for the others in the house not to notice.
How did he even manage to kill four people without anyone making appreciable noise?
'E's mental, innit?
He studies criminals, to learn about himself.
He visits an Idaho restaurant.
An aside from 4channers: I went to school at U of I and those women are completely mindblowing.
Also: Mormon women are gorgeous when they're young.
But then: Ick!
And: I'll show you, bitch!
But this could be wrong and he might be innocent.
(but how without any noise
[glug glug].)
The murder-suicide of a student and her Canadian hockey player boyfriend in their sleep by her jealous ex at Geneseo State a few years ago was accomplished in a similar way. There are a lot of Indians in Western New York; one wonders where he learned the trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_DustonReplies: @Bill P, @Jim Don Bob
A guy on Youtube calculated that this Friedman’s guy political guest were 70% Jewish, they were also overrepresented quite a lot in other categories but not nearly has much. Joe Rogan had 42% Jewish political guests. It’s really nice to have a broad perspectives on the world isn’t it, no nepotism involved whatsoever….
The story thus far, could be completely false:
‘E’s mental, innit?
He studies criminals, to learn about himself.
He visits an Idaho restaurant.
An aside from 4channers: I went to school at U of I and those women are completely mindblowing.
Also: Mormon women are gorgeous when they’re young.
But then: Ick!
And: I’ll show you, bitch!
But this could be wrong and he might be innocent.
(but how without any noise
[glug glug].)
Steves stick together.
>make money
Oh that’s right, you don’t want your writing to result in the extrajudicial death of unelected bureaucrats.
Fortunately, I saw it, recognized Harari's name and decided that I'd better take a read thorough myself to vet it. It's a very well put together work with a lot of pretty good material. There are quite a number of points that I agreed with wholeheartedly.
He approaches the norms and sacred cows of all historical periods with a detached irreverence...until he gets to the Woke dogma of the present day. Then it's all transgenders this and George Floyd that, blah blah blah. It's a slick piece of propaganda if you want your kids to be told how ignorant everyone was "back then" and how enlightened our attitudes are now. The first volume wasn't bad but the last part of the second volume was pure poison, the effect of which is made worse by how slickly packaged and authoritative the work appears up that point.
Needless to say, I made my wife aware of what they really were and she packed them right back off to the library.
The takeaway is that you have to vet every damn thing these days!Replies: @RSDB
E. Michael Jones has an interesting discussion of Sapiens which he published as a booklet, I think, and which sets up his own foray into metahistory in Logos Rising. As usual with Jones I recall thinking the critique was a bit too personal at times, but he does make some interesting points about the assumptions, sometimes contradictory ones, which get smuggled into a book like Sapiens.
I think the booklet had the rather unfortunate title of Jewish Fables, but that’s Jones for you.
Harari is probably a good historian and he has a knack for bold pronouncements but he seems to have very little philosophical acumen and tends not to think through his own statements with any particular care.
Even as a critical reader I could feel a certain emotional pull to the arc that Harari wanted to put forward, which is why I found it to be a particularly disturbing piece of propaganda. I don't mind if my kids are exposed to a certain amount of Woke arguments, especially when they can be put in context and the logical flaws exposed. I think of it a bit like a philosophical immune system; it needs to exercised or kids will be wholly unprepared for the cultural onslaught.
Again though, as a critical reader I found Harari's didactic gushing tone as he fawned over current Woke norms to be quite cringe-worthy, jarring, and out of place with the rest of the books' tone of wry detachment deployed when dissecting any other era's sacred cows.
I'll check out E. Michael Jones critique of Sapiens, so thanks for mentioning it.Replies: @RSDB
White God (2015).
I encourage people to look into The Banshees of Inisherin. Wonderful all around: acting, writing, cinematography. A bit dark in the 2nd half so not for everyone.
Females with minor admixture generally have no problem passing the shelters’ aggression tests.
And shelters are generally very strict about this, because they will get sued.
The question for all movies these days is whether they have annoying jammed superfluous/discordant/anachronistic/annoying blacks into it rendering it--whatever its other merits--unwatchable.Replies: @Colin Wright
‘…The question for all movies these days is whether they have annoying jammed superfluous/discordant/anachronistic/annoying blacks into it rendering it–whatever its other merits–unwatchable.’
Past the inevitable token, if there’re blacks in it, I won’t watch it.
Post-Summer of George, it’s a matter of principle. They started a race war, and I’d no more watch a movie with blacks in it now than I would check out Goebbel’s latest offering if it were 1943.
Seriously. My daughter recommended the recent remake of Dune. My first — and only — question was ‘Are the Fremen black?’
‘Yes.’ Then I won’t watch it. Ten years ago — sure. Now? No.
I’m not upset at all, Pat.
It’s what I’d cheerfully say to you at Denny’s as I chowed on my “Hammy Slammy.”
Btw, I refuted your comment quite nicely. You claimed Steve’s observation about dark-faced dogs was Asperger’s induced, and I told you why you might be an ignorant twit, since anyone who knows about filming dark-faced dogs know it’s a pain in the ass, since you have to deal with it for every scene the dog is in, limiting your cinematic choices.
It’s like willfully adding another 100 problems to your SAT, without getting extra credit for it. Unless it involves a creative choice, cinematographers like their jobs to be easier, not harder. That’s why they don’t ask for dark-faced dogs in a dog movie. It limits their lenses, their lighting, their blocking out the scene. Unless there’s a damned good reason, they logically, practically, don’t want it.
That is, when Lulu is lit well, Tatum’s face will get blown out. When Tatum is lit perfectly, Lulu looks like she’s guarding the gates of hell. In the context of that movie, the cinematographer used that problem creatively, because Lulu was, at times, a hell dog.
But you’ll notice at the end of the movie, it was “fuck Tatum, let’s light that bitch up good,” and they did, which worked perfectly. Beautiful redemption shots at the end. Beautiful, well lit Lulu. Sorry, Tatum.
Lit creatively, and well.
So… again… shut up, Pat.
And pass the syrup.
I have some foggy memory that some whiny XX bureaucrat decided it was unfair that veterans were getting a leg up over her because of their military service which was overwhelmingly male. And sued for sex discrimination and ... heck if I know what happened after that. So no idea how it works now.
But under that system, this pretty much guaranteed that any disabled veteran who hadn't been reduced to vegetable could find some sort of federal employment doing something within his capability.
Of course, even better ... not having stupid wars that kill/maim good young men.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
The federal civil service test was ruled racist in the Carter administration, and no one ever bothered to even try to create a new one that would pass judicial scrutiny. NYC spent years and mucho dinero trying to come up with a fire fighter’s promotion test where the results are (hint hint) “equitable”.
Depends on how you do it. Hannah Duston and Mary Neff were shown by an abducted English boy who, on the surface, had “gone native” how the Indians killed groups of people in their sleep without waking anybody. They did just this, and escaped.
The murder-suicide of a student and her Canadian hockey player boyfriend in their sleep by her jealous ex at Geneseo State a few years ago was accomplished in a similar way. There are a lot of Indians in Western New York; one wonders where he learned the trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Duston
Heavy blades can do a lot of damage quickly. Just the other day I cut clear through my own skin in a cooking slip-up that involved little force. A sharp, long blade with some force behind it goes through flesh before you know it -- that's why I'm usually pretty careful when cutting up an animal. You can cut too far too fast and ruin your cuts if you don't take it easy.
It's totally gruesome to think of doing this to innocent young people, but alas it isn't so (physically) hard to do. Blades are extremely effective.
Ethan Chapin came from Skagit County, just a half hour down I-5 from me. A few years ago I'd thought about moving to Moscow, ID myself. He has two surviving triplet siblings. It really baffles to try to wrap one's mind around this crime, but the idea of "broken soul" comes to my mind. How could someone butcher people like that? Only someone who has rejected and lost his own humanity.Replies: @Twinkie, @prosa123
The murder-suicide of a student and her Canadian hockey player boyfriend in their sleep by her jealous ex at Geneseo State a few years ago was accomplished in a similar way. There are a lot of Indians in Western New York; one wonders where he learned the trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_DustonReplies: @Bill P, @Jim Don Bob
Apparently he killed two girls who were sleeping alone, then he came upon the couple and killed the male (Ethan Chapin) first. The only one who fought back was Ethan Chapin’s girlfriend, who probably woke up as her boyfriend was being slaughtered.
Heavy blades can do a lot of damage quickly. Just the other day I cut clear through my own skin in a cooking slip-up that involved little force. A sharp, long blade with some force behind it goes through flesh before you know it — that’s why I’m usually pretty careful when cutting up an animal. You can cut too far too fast and ruin your cuts if you don’t take it easy.
It’s totally gruesome to think of doing this to innocent young people, but alas it isn’t so (physically) hard to do. Blades are extremely effective.
Ethan Chapin came from Skagit County, just a half hour down I-5 from me. A few years ago I’d thought about moving to Moscow, ID myself. He has two surviving triplet siblings. It really baffles to try to wrap one’s mind around this crime, but the idea of “broken soul” comes to my mind. How could someone butcher people like that? Only someone who has rejected and lost his own humanity.
One theory is that Bryan Kohberger's targets were Maddie and Xana, with Kaylee and Ethan collateral damage. Maddie and Xana worked at the Mad Greek restaurant, one of the only restaurants in Pullman-Moscow which had vegan items on the menu. Kohberger is a vegan. It is possible that while patronizing the Mad Greek he got in a conversation with them and found out where they lived. They might have invited him to a party and given him the location, note that their house was a known party spot.
What doesn't add up is that according to rumor, yes it's only rumor, some or possibly all of the victims were stabbed well beyond what would be sufficient to be fatal. In fact one of the girls, likely either Kaylee or Maddie, was nearly beheaded.
I hated school and would daydream about running off and living in the woods like in my favorite childhood novel My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who does so after reading Thoreau. I happened to live across the road from a huge, wooded area covering several hundred acres and would spend hours roaming it with my collie dog and those were the happiest hours of my childhood. People often say Atlas Shrugged turns people into libertarians but my exposure to these early influences combined with my hatred of government schools did it for me before I even discovered Ayn Rand.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @HammerJack, @Twinkie
I liked that show a lot when I was a teen, but, as an adult, found it hollow – all atmosphere and no substance.
Heavy blades can do a lot of damage quickly. Just the other day I cut clear through my own skin in a cooking slip-up that involved little force. A sharp, long blade with some force behind it goes through flesh before you know it -- that's why I'm usually pretty careful when cutting up an animal. You can cut too far too fast and ruin your cuts if you don't take it easy.
It's totally gruesome to think of doing this to innocent young people, but alas it isn't so (physically) hard to do. Blades are extremely effective.
Ethan Chapin came from Skagit County, just a half hour down I-5 from me. A few years ago I'd thought about moving to Moscow, ID myself. He has two surviving triplet siblings. It really baffles to try to wrap one's mind around this crime, but the idea of "broken soul" comes to my mind. How could someone butcher people like that? Only someone who has rejected and lost his own humanity.Replies: @Twinkie, @prosa123
Don’t you put your index finger next to the blade when you get close to the lower organs?
Within about 20 feet or so, someone wielding a blade is more dangerous than someone with a handgun. Blades can do a horrific amount of damage in a short time span, and it takes very little skill to do that damage.
Btw i cut myself by just being stupid and using a knife as a wedge. It wasn't even a very sharp or good knife, which is why I underestimated what it could do. If it had been one of my Japanese knives I couldn't have avoided the ER. Would have cut clear to the bone (I use fine Arkansas stones on my good knives).Replies: @Twinkie
I think the booklet had the rather unfortunate title of Jewish Fables, but that's Jones for you.
Harari is probably a good historian and he has a knack for bold pronouncements but he seems to have very little philosophical acumen and tends not to think through his own statements with any particular care.Replies: @Barbarossa
Yeah, I agree that Harari is a decent historian and seemingly a smart guy. Overall, I really kind of wanted to like Sapiens. It’s very well presented and very authoritative sounding. Also, the graphic novel format (and visual formats in general) tend to blunt the critical faculty of the reader which makes it that much easier to make a dubious point flow seamlessly.
Even as a critical reader I could feel a certain emotional pull to the arc that Harari wanted to put forward, which is why I found it to be a particularly disturbing piece of propaganda. I don’t mind if my kids are exposed to a certain amount of Woke arguments, especially when they can be put in context and the logical flaws exposed. I think of it a bit like a philosophical immune system; it needs to exercised or kids will be wholly unprepared for the cultural onslaught.
Again though, as a critical reader I found Harari’s didactic gushing tone as he fawned over current Woke norms to be quite cringe-worthy, jarring, and out of place with the rest of the books’ tone of wry detachment deployed when dissecting any other era’s sacred cows.
I’ll check out E. Michael Jones critique of Sapiens, so thanks for mentioning it.
Depends what I’m cutting. Usually yes, but I like using a flexible blade for boning, and sometimes you just grip the handle with that.
Btw i cut myself by just being stupid and using a knife as a wedge. It wasn’t even a very sharp or good knife, which is why I underestimated what it could do. If it had been one of my Japanese knives I couldn’t have avoided the ER. Would have cut clear to the bone (I use fine Arkansas stones on my good knives).
I use diamond plates on a guided system to sharpen my blades. I finish with a strop leather with some compound on it.Replies: @Bill P
Heavy blades can do a lot of damage quickly. Just the other day I cut clear through my own skin in a cooking slip-up that involved little force. A sharp, long blade with some force behind it goes through flesh before you know it -- that's why I'm usually pretty careful when cutting up an animal. You can cut too far too fast and ruin your cuts if you don't take it easy.
It's totally gruesome to think of doing this to innocent young people, but alas it isn't so (physically) hard to do. Blades are extremely effective.
Ethan Chapin came from Skagit County, just a half hour down I-5 from me. A few years ago I'd thought about moving to Moscow, ID myself. He has two surviving triplet siblings. It really baffles to try to wrap one's mind around this crime, but the idea of "broken soul" comes to my mind. How could someone butcher people like that? Only someone who has rejected and lost his own humanity.Replies: @Twinkie, @prosa123
Apparently he killed two girls who were sleeping alone, then he came upon the couple and killed the male (Ethan Chapin) first. The only one who fought back was Ethan Chapin’s girlfriend, who probably woke up as her boyfriend was being slaughtered.
It didn’t help that Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogen were clearly intoxicated in the food truck video.
One theory is that Bryan Kohberger’s targets were Maddie and Xana, with Kaylee and Ethan collateral damage. Maddie and Xana worked at the Mad Greek restaurant, one of the only restaurants in Pullman-Moscow which had vegan items on the menu. Kohberger is a vegan. It is possible that while patronizing the Mad Greek he got in a conversation with them and found out where they lived. They might have invited him to a party and given him the location, note that their house was a known party spot.
What doesn’t add up is that according to rumor, yes it’s only rumor, some or possibly all of the victims were stabbed well beyond what would be sufficient to be fatal. In fact one of the girls, likely either Kaylee or Maddie, was nearly beheaded.
One of these fine Arkansas stones?
CRATER OF DIAMONDS STATE PARK
What do you use to sharpen your Arkansas toothpick (below)? These were somewhat unpopular with legislatures in neighboring states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaculite
This company has a good selection of bench stones:
https://arkansaswhetstone.net/
But be forewarned -- it takes a long time to polish a blade by hand with the finest novaculite. If you're a bit OCD about it you can end up working on a blade for an hour to get it just right. The coarser stones are good enough for most purposes, but when you really work on quality steel with extra-fine novaculite it keeps its edge for months and cuts as clean as steel can cut.
A Jeremiad of Dunces
Rumor has it that Jeremy Renner* turned down the role later filled by Channing Tatum in The Dog so that he (Jeremy) could star in the upcoming "Snow Pierce" Plowman. When asked by a reporter, who had somehow gotten to his hospital bedside, if he had made a career mistake, the delirious and heavily medicated actor gasped, "You're a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!"
* "The Yiddish surname Renner is based on the German Renner, which means 'runner/messenger.' Another German Jewish surname with the same meaning is Laufer." Jeremy Renner is not Jewish, but I'll buy the rest of the above and assume that "Laufman" rhymes with "Kaufman." A World War I folk etymology from the 24th Century asserts a similar definition for "Hitler."
Also see: Jeremy Irons will star in a sequel as an aged and rusty Ferrous Bueller
See also: In celebration of the purported effects of an estimated 5% component of Sub-Saharan ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews, Jack D. will be writing a biography of the indicted "horndog" Ron "Unz" JeremyReplies: @duncsbaby
He is the oldest of seven siblings, the youngest of whom was born in 2011, which made him a new big brother at 40 years old. His mother has Irish ancestry. Renner is also of German descent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Renner
I dunno, it was a pretty good movie. It hit every note. But I’m in the Army 29 years now, eight years in the Green Berets. Was in Afghanistan before Big Army came in, in 2002. I’m not trying to throw my dick on the table, but this movie was just so pat and mawkish.
I mean, it hit some chords, but this is what the ‘good side’ of Hollywood thinks of us. I thought I was going to cry like a baby, but came away stopping it every once in a while just to make a sandwich and guess what the obvious next thing was going to be–batted 1000.
Chaning looked great, and I think that was what half of the movie was about. Surprised Mark Wallberg didn’t do a cameo as a pissed-off NCO doing pull-ups.
Not trying to hate, but it was a very average movie.
I thought they were like the Marines - once a Marine, always a Marine.
Thank you for your service.
https://www.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/diamond-found-at-arkansas-park-expected-to-fetch-1-million.jpgCRATER OF DIAMONDS STATE PARK
What do you use to sharpen your Arkansas toothpick (below)? These were somewhat unpopular with legislatures in neighboring states.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Arkansas_Toothpick.jpgReplies: @Bill P
Why, novaculite, of course
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaculite
This company has a good selection of bench stones:
https://arkansaswhetstone.net/
But be forewarned — it takes a long time to polish a blade by hand with the finest novaculite. If you’re a bit OCD about it you can end up working on a blade for an hour to get it just right. The coarser stones are good enough for most purposes, but when you really work on quality steel with extra-fine novaculite it keeps its edge for months and cuts as clean as steel can cut.
Apparently not.
This post and comment thread demonstrate how Exceptionally! mass culture has indoctrinated the American people into autistic identification with Uncle Sam.
Never mind why Our Heroes were in Iraq to suffer so touchingly, they’re Iraq-damaged. And they need to be repaired to stand with Ukraine.
Iraq-damaged. Hollywood would never feed you a movie about them, but how would you describe Madeleine Albright’s 500,000 worthits?
The murder-suicide of a student and her Canadian hockey player boyfriend in their sleep by her jealous ex at Geneseo State a few years ago was accomplished in a similar way. There are a lot of Indians in Western New York; one wonders where he learned the trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_DustonReplies: @Bill P, @Jim Don Bob
You only have to hit someone in the head once if you use a hatchet.
Indeed, a month or so ago, a commenter here informed me that Lenny Susskind, who was on my thesis committee, is coming out with a popular book on General Relativity. Since I am writing a book on the same subject, this was crucial information for me to have, and I am indebted to that commenter.
What I am objecting to is the sort of silly stuff like "50 books every educated person should read." Yes, I actually do think people should read 1984, mainly because the warning it gives is so important.
But while I read and enjoyed Huck Finn, The Odyssey, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I am reluctant to say that a person is culturally stunted if they not have read those three books. (Incidentally, Harper Lee was most assuredly not a liberal. Read her first book: Go Set a Watchman. She was a libertarian conservative, a self-conscious limited-government, states-rights Jeffersonian.)
This is even more so with non-fiction books. I could name a number of non-fiction books that were critical for me in understanding reality better. But, in almost all cases there are other books that could serve almost as well.Replies: @Bill
We speak past one another. I am defending stuff like “50 books every educated person should read” while admitting that any such list is, in a certain sense, arbitrary. Just like which side of the road you drive on or which language you speak. These are both, in a certain sense, arbitrary, and, in a certain sense, very far from arbitrary.
Not only is it critical that you drive on the same side of the road as everyone else and speak the same language as everyone else, but it is also critical that there be a side of the road everyone drives on and a language everyone speaks. Disaster would ensue if there were not.
And disaster has ensued in the US because there are not 50 books every educated person has read (and all the stuff which goes along with that). Our hideous, thin, ugly, utterly amoral, low-context culture is the disaster.
I’m certainly not defending the list Fridman posted, by the way, which looks like something Vox Dei would come up with (well, except it doesn’t have a strategy guide to Advanced Squad Leader on it).
I mean, it hit some chords, but this is what the 'good side' of Hollywood thinks of us. I thought I was going to cry like a baby, but came away stopping it every once in a while just to make a sandwich and guess what the obvious next thing was going to be--batted 1000.
Chaning looked great, and I think that was what half of the movie was about. Surprised Mark Wallberg didn't do a cameo as a pissed-off NCO doing pull-ups.
Not trying to hate, but it was a very average movie.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Why only 8 years in the Green Berets? Did you flunk out? 😉
I thought they were like the Marines – once a Marine, always a Marine.
Thank you for your service.
Yeah, but there’s the noise to consider. It might wake the other potential victims.
Btw i cut myself by just being stupid and using a knife as a wedge. It wasn't even a very sharp or good knife, which is why I underestimated what it could do. If it had been one of my Japanese knives I couldn't have avoided the ER. Would have cut clear to the bone (I use fine Arkansas stones on my good knives).Replies: @Twinkie
Almost any knife can be made extremely sharp. It’s just that knives with low hardness won’t stay sharp for long.
I use diamond plates on a guided system to sharpen my blades. I finish with a strop leather with some compound on it.
If you polish the edge it cuts well and stays sharp for a surprisingly long time.
Of course stropping is a polishing method, but nothing beats the finer grades of Arkansas whetstones. The only problem with them is that it takes a lot of work to properly polish an edge, especially on good steel like VG-10 (my preference for cooking knife steel). But it does pay off. My knives can stay very sharp for months despite frequent use.Replies: @Twinkie
Past the inevitable token, if there're blacks in it, I won't watch it.
Post-Summer of George, it's a matter of principle. They started a race war, and I'd no more watch a movie with blacks in it now than I would check out Goebbel's latest offering if it were 1943.
Seriously. My daughter recommended the recent remake of Dune. My first -- and only -- question was 'Are the Fremen black?'
'Yes.' Then I won't watch it. Ten years ago -- sure. Now? No.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Javier Bardem is black?
I use diamond plates on a guided system to sharpen my blades. I finish with a strop leather with some compound on it.Replies: @Bill P
Diamond is kind of rough on the edge. I use it for tools but not my good knives. I’ve found that there are two kinds of sharp: microserrated and polished. With rougher stones or diamond sharpeners you get an edge that cuts very well, but doesn’t last all that long. I’m fairly sure that’s because it creates a saw-like edge that, while effective, blunts quickly.
If you polish the edge it cuts well and stays sharp for a surprisingly long time.
Of course stropping is a polishing method, but nothing beats the finer grades of Arkansas whetstones. The only problem with them is that it takes a lot of work to properly polish an edge, especially on good steel like VG-10 (my preference for cooking knife steel). But it does pay off. My knives can stay very sharp for months despite frequent use.
With a leather strop and a 0.25 micron emulsion compound, I can mirror-polish any knife edge. And I mean mirror-polish (that doesn't mean I do - for many uses, e.g. cutting rope and similar materials, I prefer toothier edges).Replies: @Bill P
If you polish the edge it cuts well and stays sharp for a surprisingly long time.
Of course stropping is a polishing method, but nothing beats the finer grades of Arkansas whetstones. The only problem with them is that it takes a lot of work to properly polish an edge, especially on good steel like VG-10 (my preference for cooking knife steel). But it does pay off. My knives can stay very sharp for months despite frequent use.Replies: @Twinkie
I use diamond plates, because most of my knives are made from super steels such as Böhler M390 or CPM 20CV, typically to about 62 HRC. These days, I consider VG-10 a pretty “basic” alloy (most knives made with it are usually around 58-59 HRC). It’s decent, but doesn’t stay sharp long and tends to chip easily at acute angles common in Japanese knives. It’s easier to sharpen compared to super steels though. I consider it inferior to even CPM S30V or S35VN.
With a leather strop and a 0.25 micron emulsion compound, I can mirror-polish any knife edge. And I mean mirror-polish (that doesn’t mean I do – for many uses, e.g. cutting rope and similar materials, I prefer toothier edges).
I just bought my oldest son one of those pm steel blades (Zero Tolerance knife) and while it's pretty impressive it's a bit too rigid for my purposes.
To see a real sharpening fanatic check out this guy:
https://youtu.be/PRMu-WEaFNEReplies: @Twinkie
With a leather strop and a 0.25 micron emulsion compound, I can mirror-polish any knife edge. And I mean mirror-polish (that doesn't mean I do - for many uses, e.g. cutting rope and similar materials, I prefer toothier edges).Replies: @Bill P
Mine are rated 61, which is plenty hard for my purposes, and VG-10 doesn’t stain/rust easily. I cook a lot, so I like a steel that doesn’t corrode if you don’t wipe it with an oiled cloth immediately after every use. For my boning knife I have a softer, more flexible carbon steel, maybe 56-57 hardness.
I just bought my oldest son one of those pm steel blades (Zero Tolerance knife) and while it’s pretty impressive it’s a bit too rigid for my purposes.
To see a real sharpening fanatic check out this guy:
My basic knock-around kitchen knife is a Miyabi I bought very cheaply on clearance (I don't give really good knives to my wife as she is monkey-handed with them) and is made of MC63 steel (aka Takefu SG2 or 3G). It's forged to HRC 63-64. Its chromium content is about 16%, so it's going to be about as stain-resistant as VG-10 (which has about 15%).
I'm a big fan of M390 and CPM 20CV (which is basically an American version of M390). They have about 20% chromium, so they are considerably more stain-resistant than VG-10 while outperforming the latter in just about every category except price. They are truly excellent all-around super steels.I'm not what one of these Internet guys who sharpen more than use their knives, but the green compound he puts on his strop doesn't hold a candle to the CBN (cubic boron nitride) emulsion compound I use.
Even as a critical reader I could feel a certain emotional pull to the arc that Harari wanted to put forward, which is why I found it to be a particularly disturbing piece of propaganda. I don't mind if my kids are exposed to a certain amount of Woke arguments, especially when they can be put in context and the logical flaws exposed. I think of it a bit like a philosophical immune system; it needs to exercised or kids will be wholly unprepared for the cultural onslaught.
Again though, as a critical reader I found Harari's didactic gushing tone as he fawned over current Woke norms to be quite cringe-worthy, jarring, and out of place with the rest of the books' tone of wry detachment deployed when dissecting any other era's sacred cows.
I'll check out E. Michael Jones critique of Sapiens, so thanks for mentioning it.Replies: @RSDB
Yes– one trouble is that Harari is not as authoritative as he makes out, because he is not a scientist and not a philosopher, and he insists on talking science and philosophy, being “sciency” as your wife put it. At least when I was a kid reading Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku on physics, they were actual physicists.
That’s a good point too. As Chesterton says, the definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you; and howls when you hurt him. It’s very easy to be detached and wry when talking about things other people hold dear, harder when it affects the self.
I just bought my oldest son one of those pm steel blades (Zero Tolerance knife) and while it's pretty impressive it's a bit too rigid for my purposes.
To see a real sharpening fanatic check out this guy:
https://youtu.be/PRMu-WEaFNEReplies: @Twinkie
That’s very unusual as VG-10 heat-treated to HRC 61 is going to be very chippy. Which make and model knife is it?
My basic knock-around kitchen knife is a Miyabi I bought very cheaply on clearance (I don’t give really good knives to my wife as she is monkey-handed with them) and is made of MC63 steel (aka Takefu SG2 or 3G). It’s forged to HRC 63-64. Its chromium content is about 16%, so it’s going to be about as stain-resistant as VG-10 (which has about 15%).
I’m a big fan of M390 and CPM 20CV (which is basically an American version of M390). They have about 20% chromium, so they are considerably more stain-resistant than VG-10 while outperforming the latter in just about every category except price. They are truly excellent all-around super steels.
I’m not what one of these Internet guys who sharpen more than use their knives, but the green compound he puts on his strop doesn’t hold a candle to the CBN (cubic boron nitride) emulsion compound I use.
Lex Fridman on Twitter drama over reading list
Jan 8, 2023
Excerpted from:
1984 by George Orwell | Lex Fridman
Jan 8, 2023
Strange guy. He speaks in platitudes, like a superficial pop-psychology ‘life coach’. His low-key disposition might induce some into thinking he has intellectual or moral gravitas, but many others are suspicious of him, for good reason: He comes off guarded and shady, like a mid-level underworld operative running a front business.
He also contradicts himself about the significance (to him) of the book list: He defends it both as an impromptu lark on one hand (it’s no big deal guys, whatever) and a profound list of essential classics on the other (the list is unassailable and beyond criticism). It can’t be both. Either he’s serious about it or not. But he won’t elaborate in any meaningful way, beyond saying he feels sad about the Twitter drama.
My daughter signed me up for Amazon Prime for Christmas, but so far I’ve not found much on Prime Video that interests me. Much of it looks stupid and/or woke.
Any suggestions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZY-NI9knw
Jan 8, 2023Excerpted from:1984 by George Orwell | Lex Fridman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sk6lTLSZcA
Jan 8, 2023Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Thanks.
Strange guy. He speaks in platitudes, like a superficial pop-psychology ‘life coach’. His low-key disposition might induce some into thinking he has intellectual or moral gravitas, but many others are suspicious of him, for good reason: He comes off guarded and shady, like a mid-level underworld operative running a front business.
He also contradicts himself about the significance (to him) of the book list: He defends it both as an impromptu lark on one hand (it’s no big deal guys, whatever) and a profound list of essential classics on the other (the list is unassailable and beyond criticism). It can’t be both. Either he’s serious about it or not. But he won’t elaborate in any meaningful way, beyond saying he feels sad about the Twitter drama.