EXASPERATION
If I never see Seattle again, it will be too soon. It’s like a Microsoft is an intellectual bio weapons lab, and every employee is a carrier, and the entire region is now infected by moronic zombies whose only memory is 1992. Windows is important. Kurt Cobain is singing. Hiking is cool. 80’s deconstructivist home architecture is fashionable. And everyone is gonna be a millionaire in sandals and tee shirts.
F__K….
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-02 18:04:00 UTC
DRAW A PERFECT CIRCLE
Make a few million. Lose a few million. The difference is just zeros. Sigh. It’s knowing how easy it is to make millions that matters. It’s just work.
Draw a perfect circle.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-02 17:01:00 UTC
Why do I love competition, fighting and war so much, yet despise interpersonal conflict? I don’t understand it. Weird. But I get to go to war on a big business issue this week and it thrills me no end. 🙂 The more zeros the better. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-02 13:31:00 UTC
SHUTDOWN PARTY : FOOD AND BEER, WINE AND CHEESE, OR CAKE AND COFFEE?
All of the above? Yes!
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-01 03:17:00 UTC
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN PARTY! WHOO HOOO!!!
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-01 02:57:00 UTC
ONE YEAR IN EXILE : THE EXPERIENCE OF DETOXING FROM AMERICA
(Some random thoughts after 51 weeks in Ukraine.)
WHAT DO I MISS?
1) Cleanliness. I miss ‘clean’. I like clean and tidy and pretty, all wrapped up in a victorian bow. Everything is dirty here. Everything. The commons is something that does not exist in though, action, or practice.
2) Movies. I pretty much go to every movie that comes out. And for the past year I haven’t seen anything that isn’t on Amazon.
3) “Really Well Educated People”. They don’t exist here. Russian grade school is fantastic. But that is aging out of the school system here too. Russian university education is…. weak. Extremely weak. Surprisingly so. IT’s metaphysical. I can’t put my finger on it. But you know, for every idiot in the social sciences we have in america, the people on this side of the world have an idiot in the natural sciences.
4) Customer Service. American customer service is amazing. You can’t really shop here either. The choices are very limited. and “Doing things right.”. People sort of hack everything together. Every repair of everything is done without pride or professionalism.
The USA is clean. And the ‘really smart people’ are actually ‘really smart’. Unfortunately everyone OTHER than the ‘really smart people’ has been failed by our indoctrinating ‘equalitarian-diversity-promoting’ education system, and that vast numbers of ignorant disillusioned self righteous, entitlement seeking morons walk the streets like not-quite-yet-zombies on the verge of changing entirely into rabid spittle-spewing animals, while the few civilized folk armor themselves in heavy german cars, gated neighborhoods and fortified homes in a desperate attempt to keep both the state and the barbarians at bay.
WHAT DO I LOVE?
1) The people are… really the best I have ever encountered in the world. They are gentle, sweet, helpful, kind, loving and so beautiful that I never cease to be awed by it.
2) Men are men and women are women, and families are the most important social unit, and that turns out to be so damned awesome for everyone.
3) You can walk through a city part at midnight and the only danger is that you’ll interrupt a couple kissing under a tree.
4) Everyone understands how evil government is, because corruption that we in the states have institutionalized but is invisible, is very visible, and personal here.
I don’t miss America and its internecine conflict. I don’t miss the hatred of white christian males. The inescapable narcissism. Being inundated by lame and tragic advertising. Mind numbing commercialism. I don’t miss watching my country and civilization die at the hands of the left’s war on any form of reason, or judgement that can exist.
Those things I do miss are the few things that remain symbols of the middle class that they desperately cling to as their only symbol of self respect, while the institutional, cultural, and physical world crumbles around them.
All they have left is their consumption, their homes and cars. Because there is no ‘we’ left. No commons. No truth and beauty. Nothing.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 11:10:00 UTC
LIBERTY (MAYBE IT’S THE COFFEE)
I was just going to sit and relax and listen to a book on tape today before designing this one feature that needs some of my attention.
And then one particular post just made me lose my patience.
Why the hell do I want to reform libertarianism?
Because I spent most of my life trying to solve the problem of CONFLICT. And I spent most of my early adulthood trying to find a language that would give aristocratic conservatives the ability to defend their ideas in ratio-scientific rather than purely moral and allegorical terms.
And then, by accident, in a speech by Hans Hoppe I saw that he had made necessary, not preferential arguments. I knew something was wrong. I intuited that something was wrong with his logic. And it bothered me. But the fact that he had found a path through democracy was enough of a starting point.
It has taken me twelve years from hearing that speech, to base his arguments on science rather than rationalism. And to correct libertarian arguments by returning them from the ghetto to the aristocracy where they came from.
The kernel of the solution to political conflict is in Hoppe’s work. It’s not right yet. His Argumentation is a DESCRIPTION not a CAUSE. But it allowed me to find the CAUSE and with that cause, explain all moral codes and how we can cooperate across them, rather than the need for a monopoly of moral codes that imposes one morality by political force upon others with different moral preferences.
Libertarians need not be so self impressed. Conservatives, without reason and science, are much more effective at politics that we are. And that is because they correctly understand human nature.
We have an INCORRECT (arguably semitic) assumption about human nature in our rothbardian arguments that is scientifically false, demonstrably undesirable, and demonstrably ineffective. The aristocratic west is the only high trust society in existence. And we accomplished that using the moral code of conservatives, not rothbardian libertarianism.
We were wrong on morality. The conservatives were right. Hoppe is right on institutions. But we must understand that we were wrong on morality and as such we are INSUFFICIENT in our institutional solutions.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-28 06:20:00 UTC
(Silly) NEW GLASSES
Picked up my new computer-reading glasses. Round lenses. I love them.
Veronika says I look like an old professor. Sigh.
I don’t mind the professor part. But the “old” thing hurts a bit. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-25 08:14:00 UTC
A MAN’S NEEDS
Ran across a kindred spirit over late breakfast. He has the same ‘gear’.
iPhone
Macbook Air
Jeans, Collared Shirt, V-neck sweater.
Leather Jacket.
Backpack.
Motorcycle or Roadster
Cash and Card
Manners, ethics, morals and a smile.
Basic understanding of money, history, science and logic.
Friends and Friends with Benefits
(prescriptions, toiletries, and of course, the proverbial towel)
Doesn’t take much really.
Possessions are both a prison, and the means by which the state controls you.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-25 06:51:00 UTC
Curt Doolittle shared a photo.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-25 05:15:00 UTC