Tag: philosophy

Comms by Meme

This will suffice to cover approximately 83.4 percent of all of my interactions on Gab. And an alarmingly high percentage of my real life interactions.

If anyone ever asks what the tears of blood are for, you can tell them, “it’s probably something you said.” This was the interaction that inspired the meme.

VD: You’re incorrect about the history of the word “racist”. The word and the concept were both invented by a US Civil War general, who coined the term “racism” in 1902 to justify the destruction of the American Indian race, language, faith, and culture. It was subsequently adopted by Trotsky, not Lenin, for the purpose of attacking European Christians.

GAB: Any historical records to back that up? Especially the strangely “anonymous” Civil War general?
I do agree that European Christians believed in segregation and that Trotsky also used the term racist.
Never heard of this “anonymous” Civil War general? If there was such a person, he would have certainly been in the minority. While many people in the US were against slavery… very, very few believed in racial intermarrying.

Notice the quotes around the word “anonymous”, which were inserted twice without actually quoting anything or anyone. No wonder the rest of the world is so unimpressed by Clown World’s toothless democracy rhetoric; five minutes exposure to any social media platform is enough to convince every rational being of the comparative merits of literally any other political system.

Let reason be silent when historical documentation gainsays its tortured syllogisms.

DISCUSS ON SG

Success is not Real

At least, not in the entertainment industry. The main reason to follow CDAN is not to keep up on celebrities, but rather, to see through the illusion that is presented to the world by their makers.

February 24, 2023

This one named flash in the pan A/A- list singer is not playing ball like the label and her people are wanting. I think she thinks that she is big enough now to not need them. That is not the way the industry plant thing works. You do as you are told, or your career goes away very very quickly. She was thrust upon the world right before COVID for one reason and she served her purpose.

Lizzo

And now, five months later, the woman’s career is being methodically demolished, precisely as predicted.

The rise and fall of Lizzo: How HAS the pop icon gone from being a champion of body positivity and feminism to the verge of cancellation for sexual harassment and body shaming?

THE DAILY MAIL, 2 August 2023

Anyone who is tempted to take the ticket would do well to reflect upon the observable fact that the success it provides is manufactured, the fame it provides is ephemeral, the money it provides is on loan, and the control that comes with it is absolute.

And in the end, the taker of the ticket is always cast from the high horse, dismissed and disrespected. Look at the likes of Robert de Niro or Jack Nicholsen now, and envy them, if you can.

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Ticket-Taker Taken to Task

It’s educational to note that Steven Crowder’s marriage abruptly disintegrated and his past misbehavior was exposed after he refused to submit and kiss the ring at the Daily Wire:

One former Louder with Crowder employee told Mediaite that during his time on the show, he received unsolicited, sexually graphic texts that included photos of Crowder’s genitalia. Those texts and images were reviewed by Mediaite.

“In the moment we dismissed it as sort of frat boy humor. In hindsight, it’s super creepy and felt groomer-ish,” the ex-employee said.

“It always felt like childish behavior in the moment that then felt predatory in hindsight,” he explained. “Like he was always testing people’s comfort levels with that kind of behavior. Because he was the boss though and he had no accountability, it just continued to happen. There was no one trusted to complain to.”

In addition to receiving unwanted sexual text messages, the former employee alleged that Crowder habitually exposed himself to other male staffers, a claim backed up by two other sources.

“In regards to exposing himself in general, to my knowledge, he only exposed himself to male staffers. It happened all the time. It was a regular occurrence. It usually happened when he was in a really good, sort of manic mood. So while we all were disgusted by it and it was never welcomed, it was preferable to him being in a bad mood and how he treated people in that state,” the former staffer said.

“Steven never explained it. We never talked about it. It would just happen, and everyone would either throw out a fake uncomfortable laugh or show clear disgust which Steven interpreted as his reward for what he did,” he continued. “The more disgusted everyone seemed, the more pleasure he seemed to get from it. It’s like he couldn’t understand that we weren’t in on his ‘joke.’”

Remember that binary thinking is reliably false. There are no good guys here. Crowder, like Shapiro, is a manufactured creature, the main difference is that Crowder, for whatever reason, began finding the yoke imposed upon him to be unbearable and sought to shake it off. But once you take the ticket, you cannot simply decide to untake it and free yourself from the various obligations and obediences you have agreed to assume.

This is why those whom the media proclaims to be “successes” can be reliably assumed to be fake, gay, and in most cases, criminal, because their hidden pasts are their literal hostages to their future fortunes. I was told this in oblique fashion when I was 21 by someone who absolutely grokked the system, only I didn’t understand what I was being told at the time.

Only those whose talent is absolutely undeniable, and whose achievements do not require being granted to them by some third party, can be assumed to be organic and legitimate these days. There is a reason so many “stars” admit to having imposter syndrome, and it is because they are, in fact, imposters.

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Success in Clown World

Never forget that this is what passes for success in Clown World.

Funding History: The Athletic raised $139.5 million via five funding rounds beginning in 2017.

  • Seed Funding: $2.3 million led by Courtside Ventures
  • Series A: $5.4 million led by Courtside Ventures
  • Series B: $20 million led by Evolution Media
  • Series C: $40 million co-led by Founders Fund & Bedrock Capital
  • C1 round investment: $22 million led by Founders Fund
  • Series D: $50 million led by Bedrock Capital

Operating Losses: The Athletic lost $121 million in just four years.

  • 2019: $54 million
  • 2020: $41 million
  • 2021: $55 million
  • 2022: $36 million

In January 2022, The New York Times paid $550 million for The Athletic.

All “success” in Clown World is manufactured, fake, and usually gay. Don’t chase it. You’d have to be retarded to chase it. Chase the Good, the Beautiful, and the True instead.

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Science is Observably Unreliable

Despite the best efforts of midwits like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris to square the circle by declaring science a method of determining truth, science is not only philosophically incapable of being a truth-metric, science is practically and observably unreliable, as evidenced by the untrustworthiness of even its highest practitioners in academia:

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will resign effective Aug. 31, according to communications released by the University Wednesday morning. He will also retract or issue lengthy corrections to five widely cited papers for which he was principal author after a Stanford-sponsored investigation found “manipulation of research data.”

According to Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of Trustees, Tessier-Lavigne will step down “in light of the report and its impact on his ability to lead Stanford.” Former Dean of Humanities Richard Saller will serve as interim president. In a separate statement, Tessier-Lavigne defended his reputation but acknowledged that issues with his research, first raised in a Daily investigation last autumn, meant that Stanford requires a president “whose leadership is not hampered by such discussions.”

“At various times when concerns with Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s papers emerged—in 2001, the early 2010s, 2015-2016, and March 2021—Dr. Tessier-Lavigne failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record,” Stanford’s report said, identifying a number of apparent manipulations in Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscientific research.

The report concluded that the fudging of results under Tessier-Lavigne’s purview “spanned labs at three separate institutions.”

We’re not talking about a minor scientist here. We’re talking about the corruption of the top scientist at the third-best university in the world. This is absolute and conclusive proof of the intrinsic unreliability of science and shows that the reproducibility crisis affects science at every level.

UPDATE: Those who still subscribe to the myth of scientific self-correction should note that even the investigations of scientific corruption are themselves liable to corruption.

The investigation took eight months, with one member stepping off after The Daily revealed that he maintained an $18 million investment in a biotech company Tessier-Lavigne cofounded.

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Tell Me You’re a Ticket-Taker

Without coming right out and telling me you’re a ticket-taker.

The sign of a ticket-taker: a colleague describes Huw Edwards, the BBC presenter who has been accused of paying young men to expose themselves.

“I admire the professionalism of both of them and remain impressed by Huw’s sensational rise through the BBC from humble beginnings in Bridgend.”

Key words: “sensational rise”. But wait, there’s an additional clue right there in the same article.

“We agreed that delving into the backgrounds of news journalists such as ourselves wasn’t appropriate.”

Indeed. One wouldn’t want the public looking too closely into the real reasons for those sensational rises and amazing careers, would one?

Not all material success is fake, but most success in Clown World is, at a minimum, manufactured. It’s manufactured and then distributed to those who are willing to render the required services and provide the necessary hostages. And the sooner you accept this reality, the more effective your independent efforts will be, as you will stop chasing illusions and wasting your best efforts playing a game that is rigged against you and everyone else unwilling to take their tickets.

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Devil Mouse Doubles Down

The Dark Herald reports that Disney is extending Bob Iger’s contract through 2026:

Bob Iger is the one that has put Disney in the disastrous position it’s in today. He overpaid drastically for Fox Entertainment by a factor of 100%, he let Kevin Fiege dismantle the machinery that had turned Marvel into a box office juggernaut, he allowed Kathleen Kennedy to continue driving the LucasFilm cart into the ground long after the wheels were sold off on eBay and he fired John Lassetter, replacing him with the utterly hopeless Pete Docter. The parks are empty at the height of the busy season, with the disastrous launch of Indiana Jones V the film division has lost a billion dollars since the collapse of Lightyear, and there are still two more candidates for box office martyrdom waiting in the wings before New Year’s Day. Also, Disney+, the thing that was supposed to spearhead Disney’s drive to complete streaming dominance has lost $1 billion per quarter since it was launched, and it just dropped behind Warner Brother’s Max streaming service.

According to Disney’s own documents they only have $10 billion in cash, that is somewhere between 3 to 6 weeks of operating capital on hand at any given time.

I think it would be beneficial for Karl Denninger and other materialists who sincerely believe that money, and the pursuit of it, is the primary cause of evil in the modern world to revisit their assumptions in light of the observed behavior of the corpocracy and the Western governments over the last two decades.

I assert a review of the available evidence and the application of Ockham’s Razor will inevitably lead to the conclusion that a) spiritual wickedness and b) control over the public are the primary motivating forces for the evil that we see indefatigably at work in the corpocracy today.

How much more money do they collectively have to lose in the pursuit of unprofitable evil for it to become inarguable that the evil is a motivation rather than an unfortunate and happenstantial coincidence?

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Attention is not Success

If at first you don’t succeed, just tell everyone that you meant to fail:

Jered Threatin, known by the mononym “Threatin”, is a solo artist, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles, CA. He gained notoriety in 2018 following a publicity stunt on his “Breaking the World Tour” where he manipulated social media numbers, ticket sales, and fabricated a number of fake businesses to fool venues and music industry professionals into booking a European tour where he performed in a sequence of empty rooms. This hoax successfully displayed the music industry’s reliance on social media numbers and image. During the event Threatin released a public statement; “What is Fake News? I turned an empty room into an international headline. If you are reading this you are part of the illusion.” The stunt became a viral sensation and obtained mainstream media coverage from The New York Times, BBC News, Variety, The Guardian, NME, Rolling Stone Magazine, and many other major publications.

That’s his version, anyhow. This is how an uninterested party described it.

The short version is this guy faked having a major band to book a “European Tour” and no one showed up. Then people proceeded to make documentaries & news stories about this once the venues were upset with being tricked. When you read his website he spins it as all a publicity stunt to “expose how venues rely on bad social media information.” A.K.A. “jokes on YOU! I WANTED no one to show up to my shows!” haha.

Now, there is truth to the wisdom in turning lemons into lemonaide. And few business plans survive contact with the market intact. One has only to consider the convoluted paths to success of Marufuku Co. Ltd., the Connecticut Leather Company, or even, on a much more modest scale, Castalia Library, to understand the wisdom of flexible ambition.

But media attention is not synonymous with success. Any natural disaster attracts more media attention than even the biggest success. The difference can be seen in whether the course has actually been changed or if it is claimed that the obviously inadvertent deviation was the original objective all along.

And if there is one thing that we have learned over time, it is that gammas are always going to gamma and their jokes are always on you.

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I Do Not Support Free Speech

Andrew Torba has come a long way since he appeared on Brainstorm to introduce Gab to the community. I really respect his perseverance and appreciate what he’s accomplished. But he’s still clinging to his misapprehensions about free speech.

Doing this for almost seven years now I can tell you that sadly most people do not support free speech. Even those on “the right” who claim to beg Gab to censor certain words and ideas because it offends them or whatever. The good news is those of us who do support it are waking a lot of the people in the middle up, who then in turn end up supporting it after being censored themselves or learning something on Gab thanks to free speech.

At the risk of substituting dialectic for rhetoric, I took the liberty of correcting his meme for historical accuracy.

You needn’t take my word for it. Read JB Bury’s A History of the Freedom of Thought. It’s written by a major historian of the early 20th century who is a strong free speech advocate, and he’s not shy about explaining how the right to free speech came to be and what it was intended to accomplish.

If God believed in free speech, blasphemy would not be a sin.

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Italian Apocrypha

It’s probably not true. But it is amusing to think it might be.

Knew a guy once who, back in the day, was not A-list but was high up in the academic semiotics (philosophy of signification) world. not famous but edited books people have read. he told me this story. He goes to Italy and goes to this conference. Umberto Eco is there. He meets Umberto Eco and is very excited. Umberto Eco says, hey man – tonight, come to my hotel room with a bottle of whiskey – and gives him the room number and address.

Our narrator is extremely amped about this, a private evening of discussion with the foremost man in his field. He finds a bottle of whiskey, gets to the hotel, goes to the room. Umberto Eco opens the door and says:

“Do you know what the most valuable thing in life is?”

Narrator says: no.

Umberto Eco says: “solitude” and takes the bottle, and closes the door.

To be honest, this was not my experience of Dottore Eco at all. Both times I met him, he was extremely friendly, very social, and as Spacebunny noted, more than a little charming. But it is amusing nevertheless.

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