Elitism
30 07 12 - 13:12
"Lots of people think they're into metal when they're really just into stupid bullshit. Elitism is a matter of filtering out the bullshit." - Will HubbellPriorities
29 07 12 - 09:34
When poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott constructed a house in Italy, he made it an exact replica of his original home to avoid upsetting the comforting routine he and his cat shared. - The Daily CatPortrait of an Empire in Senescence
26 07 12 - 13:53
The economy is falling apart; there's no way to pay off the debts without sacrificing everything else. And yet they go on spending as if this were not the case, perpetuating the denial.What helps them do that? Focusing on important issues, or at least distracting ones. We all love human rights because we fear for ourselves. The more our society fails, the more we fear.
And so those in power have a new distraction, which is busting people for pretend-racist tweets.
It helps us ignore that the foundation is rotted to point to a window that needs fixing.
The dangerous Nazi-fascist-Satan quote in question? "With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitos will be eating food from their own home."
A complaint about mosquitoes is worth destroying an athlete's career.
The hypocrisy of the West has never been more obvious, nor its origins, which come at a time when Greece is unable to even face the depth of its economic problems.
No wonder people watch television all day. It's less unreal than the "news."
Kill the boomers
24 07 12 - 08:16
Generation X â those born in the 1960s up to the 1980s â is society's true squeezed middle: evolved from Douglas Coupland's angsty and indolent grunge counterculture to the banal mainstream. Moreover, according to the more excitable elements of the press, it represents a cohort yet to shake off its feckless, irresponsible youth, allowing a rot to set in at society's core. Following a dubious equation between parenthood and its bourgeois trappings (marriage, mortgage) and adulthood, such doom-mongers have taken to shaking a collective choppy finger and bewailing: "Behold, the Peter Pan Generation."
At 41, I am an example of such a phenomenon: single, childfree and mortgage-less. As it happens, I would rather not be dwelling in a mouldering, rented basement, but Tink and I are trotting along just fine. One does, however, become somewhat irked when the denouncers of Generation X issue from Boomer quarters, aka, the most economically cossetted, socially indulged, lotus-eating generation of all time. - The Guardian
Giant population boom after world war meant a giant wealth boom.
Out of that came the Me generation, who took everything they could and destroyed society in their wake with psychotic "altruistic" politics.
They've left you in a wasteland.
Who won WWII?
Trolls win
18 07 12 - 20:32
USA admits trolling is a winning strategy:
Within the State Department, a Silicon Valley veteran has quietly launched an improbable new initiative to annoy, frustrate and humiliate denizens of online extremist forums. Itâs so new that it hasnât fully taken shape: Even its architects concede it hasnât fleshed out an actual strategy yet, and accordingly canât point to any results itâs yielded. Its annual budget is a rounding error. The Pentagon will spend more in Afghanistan in the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence. - WIRED
For a long time, ANUS has advocated trolling simply because intelligent argument does not exist in mass-media formats like TV, newspapers, or the internet.
It is a sane response to instead provoke your opposition and tear apart their ideas obliquely, since they'll just scream denialist propaganda at you and, per the Dunning-Kruger effect, be unable to understand any arguments better than their own.
120
16 07 12 - 19:58
In the last chapter Roth discusses the likely future of the West and the world. He estimates that the average American IQ will decline from 98 to 95 by mid-century. This may seem a small drop, but it will have dire effects for elites, because the percentage of Americans with an IQ of at least 120 will fall from 7.1 to 4.8. - Richard Lynn
This guy blames it mostly on third world immigration, while I argue for a problem of domestic fools outbreeding the smart as well.
Either way, when you've got 5% over 120s... no good idea will be recognized, but stupid ideas will be nearly universally lauded.
That's the entry point to permanent third world status.
Mozart, or just twitchy?
15 07 12 - 16:03
Lucky for these despairing types, the prevailing wisdom suggests that such comparisons are unfair â prodigies are born, not made (mostly). Practice alone isnât going to turn out the next 6-year-old Mozart.
...
Surprisingly, however, the study found that not all of the prodigies had high IQs. Indeed, while they had higher-than-average intelligence, some didnât have IQs that were as elevated as their performance and early achievements would suggest. One child had an IQ of just 108, at the high end of normal.
There was something else striking too. The authors found that prodigies scored high in autistic traits, most notably in their ferocious attention to detail. They scored even higher on this trait than did people diagnosed with Aspergerâs syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism that typically includes obsession with details.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/10/what-child-prodigies-and-autistic-people-have-in-common/#ixzz20jdX9pev
Seems like there's a little re-defining of "prodigy" here to make IQ fit into the egalitarian spectrum, but otherwise probably accurate: obsessive people with great drive and natural talent tend to succeed.
Good synopsis
13 07 12 - 23:07
"That the documents are original is the most important thing," a middle-age woman, who refused to give her name, said upon exiting the exhibition. She called the czar's overthrow "a tragedy" and said she hoped for a restoration of the monarchy, "Russia's historical path."
Although memories of the Soviet Union have grown rosier under Vladimir Putin, a proud former KGB agent, many Russians see the Bolshevik Revolution as the start of a 70-year detour from their nation's path to becoming a developed, Western European-style stateâ"a normal country," as they like to say. For them, the Romanovs' death predicts the violence and misery of the Civil War, the Stalinist era and World War II, and provides fertile ground for counterfactual fantasies in which the monarchy or the progressive government that overthrew it survives. No Gulags, no purges, no terrors, maybe. - WSJ
A good synopsis that applies to the history of the modern era: we were heading upward with the kings. We thought there was an easier way with the prole revolution. It was instead a massive detour into failure. Now we hope for the monarchy to return.
All hail the Haarslev animal crusher
11 07 12 - 23:47
Wouldn't this be a great death penalty machine? Screw this lethal injection crap. 1st degree murder? I sentence you to the Grinder!
...
They should have had some really brutal death metal music playing in the background of this video, don't you think? - Robert Lindsay
He has a point: industry has found the safest and most efficient way to dispose of biomass. Video at the link.
Interview with Troy Southgate, editor of Black Metal: European Roots & Musical Extremities
11 07 12 - 18:30
What inspired you to put together this book?
The main reason was a genuine love for the music, as well as the respect that Black Metal has for European identity and spirituality. I also believe that it is important for some of the more controversial bands to have a platform for their views and opinions, as they are often excluded by the mainstream. Black Metal was never mainstream, of course, but even the underground media - much of which is either controlled or self-policing â deliberately conspire to deny them a voice.
In your view, what was the essence of black metal as an artistic movement? Did it share a mood, feeling, ideal or ideology?
I think it expressed a number of things. In the early days, of course, particularly in Norway, there was a knee-jerk reaction to Christianity and this resulted in some pretty futile and nihilistic acts of destruction. But I also believe that Black Metal has the ability to release the latent power of our primal European identity and, if properly applied and directed, can help to wake up the youth of this beleaguered continent of ours. - "Interview with Troy Southgate, editor of Black Metal: European Roots & Musical Extremities",Examiner
The two underlined points are of interest.
Stockholm syndrome writ large
07 07 12 - 10:06
A provocative new study suggests that dissociation is associated with one form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Researchers discovered dissociation is often associated with unique PTSD symptoms of derealization, the feeling that oneâs surroundings are unreal or unfamiliar, and depersonalization, or the feeling that oneâs body is unfamiliar or strange. - PsychCentral
This explains most of the modern population, although their shock is the result of many small things adding up to a picture of confusion and doubt, not a single traumatic event.
It's like the Stockholm syndrome writ large. First disassociate, then in order to maintain the disassociation, bond with and defend that which is causing your problem.
At the end of the day, talking monkeys with car keys.
Why tradition is important
02 07 12 - 09:28
Towards the end of the 1880s, James turned his attention to the relationship between emotion and behaviour. Our everyday experience tells us that your emotions cause you to behave in certain ways. Feeling happy makes you smile, and feeling sad makes you frown. Case closed, mystery solved. However, James became convinced that this commonsense view was incomplete and proposed a radical new theory.
James hypothesised that the relationship between emotion and behaviour was a two-way street, and that behaviour can cause emotion. According to James, smiling can make you feel happy and frowning can make you feel sad. Or, to use James's favourite way of putting it: "You do not run from a bear because you are afraid of it, but rather become afraid of the bear because you run from it."
{ snip }
Subsequent research has shown that the same effect applies to almost all aspects of our everyday lives. By acting as if you are a certain type of person, you become that person â what I call the "As If" principle. - The Guardian
A common cultural values system gives you something to shoot for while putting you in position with behavioral conditioning that emphasizes the best of your behaviors. This allows you to be more than you. Social chaos does not do this.
