Something new (that is, old) to think about

A post from our friends at Quantum 19:

BAM: Builders of the Ancient Mysteries

An excellent chance to learn from others who were intent on leaving a record for those who would have to start over in the future.


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Some Scary New Initials to Start Flinging Around — MMH

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Are we being distracted from the real problem? This is a fairly typical posting from the right-leaning media… FTA: <<Liberal celebrities and entertainers love to get preachy with the public. It’s almost like it’s coded in their DNA. They just can’t resist it.   One public relations expert recently said that the public is sick and tired of it. People want to be entertained, not lectured to.   He used two specific examples. Bruce Springsteen and the Black Crowes. Springsteen’s concerts have become more like liberal talk radio and the Black Crowes actually had audience members walk out on them for trashing the USA.   Doug Eldridge, the founder of Achilles PR, says people have had it with this.   “At this point, it’s fatigue,” Eldridge said.   “Much like compounding interest, it’s not a linear calculation; it’s accumulation,” he continued. “For the last decade, fans (read: average Americans) have been lectured, lied to, gaslit, and shamed, if they didn’t confo...
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The Voices that Haunt Our Dreams

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 How this post got started… No secret that my sleep habits are a lot like That Man’s, the one so many Americans love to hate. I’ve been losing my optimism about 2.0 for a long time now, not because I don’t trust his resolve or motives but because the pessimism is a powerful force I’ve struggled against all my adult life. Which began too soon, as I’ve described elsewhere. Like him, I’m running out of time in the natural human sense of it. More still to do than likely years to do it in. My sleep comes only in chunks, punctuated by dream-induced wake-up calls that send me to the keyboard and the net and the pile of work sitting there in the in-basket. I sympathize with the champions of MAGA who are sounding so tetchy and miserable at the moment. They’re convinced they must keep trying to impress on the low-attention-span voters in their audience just how important it is to understand the depth and depravity and dastardly deeds of the Deep State. But I don’t need to be reminded. What I...
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An Unscheduled Interrupt on AI

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  RAV’s Frank Gaffney discussing existential crisis of AI  with statecraft guru Sam Faddish. What could go wrong? This, for one thing: He has his own gaggle of Chicken Little AI experts. And, inevitably, this: Me, when I’m not hiding my true self behind a photograph They’re all worried about AI. Terrified in fact. For different reasons. Bannon has some apocalyptic seer who’s worried about meta-humans replacing Homo sapiens. Gaffney and Faddis are fixated on the latest AI hot topic, “The Singularity,” that magic moment when a supercomputer becomes self aware and decides to exterminate mankind. How did we get here? The usual way. The movies. First, there was HAL: Then, just a quarter century later, after a decades-long detour through a dead-end time paradox called The Terminator , there came the monstrous harpy HAL, a transgendered terminator in a box, like we’d been brought up to believe in, including Gaffney and Faddis: Worried yet? Here’s her resumé and mission statement. C...
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REPOST w/Update & Links: An Open Letter to Trump Haters

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One of these installed in at least five different cities You probably think this is going to be a screed or a lecture. It isn’t. It’s an honest question, asked out of curiosity: WHAT ARE  YOU  GETTING OUT OF ALL THIS? Almost no one comments here, so I’m not expecting answers. I’m asking you to think about the question for yourselves, with some specificity. To wit: Has the amount of emotion you’ve invested in hating Trump for 10 years made you happier? Is your marriage better, your sex life more satisfying, your circle of friends wider, your career more prosperous, your state of mind more equable and fulfilling? How has your perspective on life changed during the last 10 years? Are you more or less optimistic, diversified in your leisure-time pursuits, content with the personal choices you’ve been making on a day-to-day basis, balanced between the frequently opposing pulls of intellect and emotion? How has your self image (your amour-propre, as the French would say) evolved dur...
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  Lewis Hamilton wins Seventh World Championship at Formula 1 Grand Prix in Turkey: A stunning drive from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the Turkish Grand Prix gave him his 10th victory of the season – and, more crucially, saw him claim the seventh drivers’ title of his career, to equal the record of Michael Schumacher, as Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel completed the podium after a thrilling race in Istanbul. Hamilton had started the race in sixth, risen to third midway through the first lap and then dropped back to sixth by the end of Lap 1 after an error at Turn 9. But a decision to change his intermediate tyres just once saw Hamilton drive a masterful race to claim victory by over 25 seconds from Perez. The win alone was enough to claim championship #7, but it was even more assured after a disastrous race for Valtteri Bottas - the only man who could have stopped Hamilton winning the title today - who spun six times en route to a P14 finish.
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abcdefu

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This is cross-posted from a confidential site I use to communicate with an old friend on matters more concerned with writing than this one normally is. Sometimes the two sites intersect in unexpected ways. (e.g., See The French Hurry-Up from Feb ‘26.) This does seem an appropriate follow-up to my most recent IPR post. Up to you what you make of it… Inevitably, another major commitment of my time called Instapunk Returns will occasionally stick its nose into the doings here. Working on both, I’m sometimes forced to ask myself how I got from Point A to Point XXX as I seem to have done yesterday at IPR. Specifically, how did I manage to get from here… Yes, I did ‘Shapes’ at graduation, but we all learned our ABCs too. …to  here ? The concluding flourish of my latest IPR screed,  Thoughts on Foul Language I put the Little Red Hen Nursery School in the same context with the song  abcdefu  because we all have an important personal timeline with respect to the alphabet. My...
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It’s not a long list. That’s the point. Hardly anyone gets to be on it. Nobody’s on it who isn’t a superhuman human. Actual gods don’t count. Only two of those, deliberately excluded. Shakespeare and Mozart.  End of that list. You want to fight? Tell me why your guy should be on the List. I’ll tell you why he isn’t. First Guy St. John the Divine Italian Guy Dante English Guys Milton Newton Blake Orwell French Guys Voltaire Pascal German Guys Bach Nietzche Jung Spanish Guy Picasso American Guys Poe Bierce
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Outrageous Madonna Pride Hoax

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That’s it ? No toilet, no breasts, no smoking. What a ripoff!!! I can’t even get any sound file with it. No panting, no dirty words, no dirty old woman vibe at all. What’s a dirty old man to do? Well, it’s not as if she hasn’t already done everything, and I mean everything to death in previous wastes of film. Here’s one you may not remember. Most people who have seen it don’t remember it. That’s how eternal the legacy of Madonna is… Had enough? Me too. File Copy: For posterity’s sake .
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