Will not be playing Cyberpunk 2077 until I finish Great Bifurcation essay. The weak must be punished!

— 🇷🇺 ANATꙮLY 🤔 KARLIN (@akarlin88) December 9, 2020

Game was trash so maybe not perhaps not a big issue…

Aliev says Pashinyan is full of goat droppings…

https://insomniacresurrected.com/2021/02/26/the-president-of-azerbaijan-says-iskander-missiles-werent-used-against-azeri-military/

Biden introduces new paint scheme for Air Force B-52’s.

PEACE 😇
 

Read understand American culture and decline, Read, Christopher Lasch’s revolt of the elites and the culture of narcissism.

tl;dr atomized boomers and capitalism are a match made in heaven. the emphasis on social ties and morals of self discipline, modesty and rigor have been replaced by what P.T Barnum called “money getting” (barnum wrote a neat primer http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm one of Donald trump’s favorite books)

to the extant that boomers admire old values such as self discipline, modesty etc. it is in the service of money getting. furthermore the value of money getting is also accompanied by extravagance and the pursuit of pleasure.

Another neat read is the chapter, future perspectives in Carroll Quigley’s tragedy and hope available for free online http://www.carrollquigley.net/books.htm

$2,000,000,000 for Raytheon.

Oh by the way did you know their Secretary of Defense was on their Board?

But he’s a person of color so it’s all good.

P.S. You’re not getting that $2,000 check. pic.twitter.com/vMNWQLRGcf

— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 26, 2021

Some way to start the day. Mike Cernovich — at least he has a sense of humor.

Another example of how Counterpunch has changed:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/26/vladimir-putins-very-bad-week/

Tesla stock now 25% below the top. That still puts them at a highly overvalued $640B market cap. For comparison, Toyota $200B and Volkswagen $100B.

Alexei Navalny is considered the bravest man in the world

LOL.

Complete joke article obviously. Protests just getting started? In reality the complete opposite. Prisons getting full? This is a funny one considering incarceration rate in Russia is decreasing every year.

A lot of links in the text. Mostly mainstream anti-Russian propaganda. I think the idea is that it makes the article look more journalistic. The more sources the better.

I rarely read anything from Counterpunch but isn’t it supposed to oppositional and anti-mainstream?

I find it interesting how the two women who made up the 90s/early 00s Russian pop group “Tatu” have now reinvented themselves as conservative, anti-LGBT Orthodox Christian women when the whole theme of “Tatu” was overtly pro-LGBT, degenerate, Atheistic, etc.

It just goes to show how much mainstream Russian culture has shifted in a short space of time and how people just mold themselves and their values to conform with the current “zeitgeist”.

WRC Finland is this weekend:

https://www.redbull.com/us-en/events/fia-world-rally-championship-arctic-rally-finland

PEACE 😇
 

The powerful take in long-form was delightful.

Women being women. Though tbf, you often most hate the evil that you’ve been part of and am familiar with the depth of it.

It’s a kind of redemption. Redemption has a price.

Politics is the art of forcing everybody else to live by your values. It is the belief that there is only “one” right way that everyone must live.

But must it always be so? At the root of the problem is the idea that “humanity” is a single organism rather than just a collection of individuals. Humanity is a protagonist in a drama that is going somewhere. Therefore we must fight over which vision of the “common good” will steer the ship of humanity.

For an individual human, obviously he must choose one course of action. Humanity as an individual must obviously have only one course.

This is a great example of how abstraction and language can trap people in self defeating fantasy – language is on some level a disease, despite its obvious advantages.

A very simple solution for most of our political differences would simply be to create different living arrangements for different people.

You want to live with only people of the same race as you? There are towns and cities for that. You enjoy living in a community with people from lots of different races and cultures? There are towns and cities for that.

It’s funny how there are so many rational and sensible solutions to human problems, yet they never get implemented.

It’s not just that humanity gets caught up in collective myths that are just the reification if language, it’s as if there is an irreducible element – a group of people – in humanity working against happiness.

Is hardcore atheism and materialism primarily an urban phenomenon?

The last 5 days I spent in solitude out in the desert. I am about 30 miles from a town and I have internet, so not true isolation or wilderness. It’s high altitude desert so the air is crystal clear and the nights cold. I am at the base of a jagged range of mountains, with gigantic boulder fields and jagged rock columns and spires – the kind of “badlands” scenery you often get in semi-desert areas.

There are sweeping panoramic views in every direction, and at night small twinkling lights from isolated homes appear on the desert plain. There is a profound silence over the landscape, and there has been a rising moon the past few nights.

I find myself at odd moments overwhelmed by an almost unbearable sense of the “numinous” and find myself flooded with thoughts of a great World Soul behind it all and in it all, and something indefinable and mysterious. And I sometimes catch myself laughing in gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a “theistic” feeling necessarily. If anything it’s more pantheistic – and it is more Taoistic in its sense of an indefinable force. But it makes me think that all our religious categories are really inadequate – theistic, pantheistic, Tao. Just inadequate words used to divide an ineffable reality.

I wonder if true atheism – not defined as disbelief in the Christian God, but rather defined as the complete absence of the sense of the numinous that characterizes certain hardcore materialists – is only really possible in an urban environment?

It is remarkable how humanity needs to step out of the human world on a regular basis and confront the “non-human” – and perhaps temporarily lay aside for a while the disease of language – in order to stay sane and come into contact with the deepest parts of himself and crucially – something beyond what he customarily takes for himself.

The political insanity of modern time, the nervous tensions, the hatreds and obsessions, the anxieties and depressions, may simply be the result of being utterly immersed in a man-made world and the loss of contact with the Other, due to mass urbanisation and population pressure.

“I rarely read anything from Counterpunch but isn’t it supposed to oppositional and anti-mainstream?”

****

On Russia matters, it has developed into something like Democracy Now. This started to happen when Alexander Cockburn passed away.

From Counterpunch to KosherPunch under Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank.

Imagine, Linh Dinh and C.J. Hopkins among others wrote for Counterpunch.

Counterpunch Shadowboxes and Loses

Edward Curtin

The well-known leftist website Counterpunch is an example of the “never apologize, never explain” school. A number of writers and journalists who have published many pieces at Counterpunch have been banned from the site in recent years without an explanation, Andre Vltchek and C.J. Hopkins being two who crossed an invisible boundary the Shadow had drawn and were never again published by Counterpunch. Others, smelling an odd odor, have walked away. The numbers are growing.

I’ve recently seen Counterpunch shadowbox and the Shadow won.

https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/21/counterpunch-shadowboxes-and-loses/

Was World War T designed as an attempt (successful) to weaponize the narcissism of trannies? And just the follow up to weaponizing the narcissism of gays? Which, in turn, was just the follow up to weaponizing the narcissism of blacks?

Some others as well. Mike Whitney hasn’t been there for awhile, as well as some woman whose name presently escaped me.

My last Counterpunch piece was awkwardly taken down from its homepage (while still otherwise being up as a link at that site), after Mark Galeotti bitched about it on TWITter.

Louis Proyect a regular Counterpunch contributor, has posted Pilsudskiite and svido leaning BS at that site. There’s something psycho rabid about him.

You are into something here, and even though I am myself religious (traditional Catholic) I agree almost completely with your comment. The Indo-European word for God (*dyew) came from the bright clear sky. In larger urban areas the sense of infinite depth and transcendence of the sky, the diurnal and especially the nocturnal (due to luminic pollution) is lost. My own personal experience is that in the city I am always locked up with a roof over my head. As I myself am a traditional Catholic, I often go to a monastery in a rural area and an important part of my religious experience for me there is to contemplate the clear, unobstructed night sky.

OT, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening.

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data.

Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists

“Ocean currents,” said Alexandrov. “I don’t understand,” said the Prime Minister.

“What I imagine Alexis means,” Kingsley remarked, “is that there is no certainty that the present pattern of ocean currents will be maintained. If it isn’t, the effects might be completely disastrous. And this might happen quite quickly, quicker than an Ice Age.”

“You said it,” nodded Alexandrov. “Gulf Stream go, gets bloody cold.”

The Prime Minister felt he had heard enough.

Fred Hoyle’s sci-fi classic The Black Cloud, 1957.

https://epdf.pub/the-black-cloud.html

Saint Anthony of Egypt, the original Desert Father, who spent many decades living ascetically in the Egyptian desert.

My last Counterpunch piece was awkwardly taken down from its homepage (while still otherwise being up as a link at that site), after Mark Galeotti bitched about it on TWITter.

Twitter search doesn’t show any mention of Counterpunch on Mark Galeotti’s twitter account. What article was it?

Irish monks sought out desolate islands because they reckoned that was the closest way they could imitate the earlier desert hermits, like St. Anthony.

Yes. The greatest generally being that a sizeable enough minority or plurality of people really just despise the idea of letting others live lives that they do not agree with. At this point, the only true equality of lifestyle comes with power, and that power unfortunately is still currently concentrated in a a few people and fewer countries.

Trump will speak Sunday. Carl Hubbell summed-up the situation this way:

“Gehrig is great, of course. But somehow you don’t get the same feeling when he’s at bat as when DiMaggio comes to the plate.”

I wonder if true atheism – not defined as disbelief in the Christian God, but rather defined as the complete absence of the sense of the numinous that characterizes certain hardcore materialists – is only really possible in an urban environment?

I don’t think so. I purposely live on the countryside and spend as much time as I can in the surrounding mountains and deserts (as a matter of fact, I’m taking to the road tonight and we may cross our paths somewhere in the Southwest, who knows) but this hasn’t helped me much with my lack of religiosity.

On the other hand, there is a deep and somewhat mysterious reason why I chose to live close to nature. I am not sure that I could express it properly with words. Being in contact with nature allows me to feel its beauty and its innate perfection, which are totally different from man-made works of art and engineering, and amazingly came about without anybody building it. Natural landscapes just formed themselves out of chaos and spontaneous natural forces but somehow we humans were born with the ability to appreciate its beauty and serenity. I’m not sure that any other animal has this ability.

Being out in the middle of nature is also for me a humbling experience when I feel how fragile I am compared to its vastness and the power of its forces. But perhaps the most important feeling that I try to recreate is the happiness that I felt as a teenager when I saw virgin mountain landscapes for the first time. I guess being in nature is for me a way to try to find happiness in life and at least to some extent it works.

@MarkGaleotti Do you seriously believe that Michael Averko is paid by the Kremlin to criticize your work?

— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) January 9, 2015

You can go to Galeotti’s TWITter account and get the initials specfically mentioning that Counterpunch piece.

That article:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/deconstructing-establishment-kremlinology/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/13012015-enigmatic-russia-detractors-analysis/

There’s a massive push also for lesbianism at the moment. I used to look at the schedules or reviews of new films coming out at arthouse cinemas and the non-black ones often had a lesbian relationship (usually with two young, cute actresses) even if they were not otherwise specifically homosexual films (unlike gay films, which had their own separate genre).

I don’t really understand the reason before this. Obviously lesbianism does not actually exist, so unlike with gay films there is no sort of market for these. The only thing I can think of is that it is a way for film directors and producers to fulfil diversity quotas (which already exist for many film awards) without showing male homosexuality, which is more viscerally disgusting.

Obviously lesbianism does not actually exist, so unlike with gay films there is no sort of market for these.

Maybe, soft porn for straight men, on streaming services? I’m honestly more surprised by the other side of it – but maybe, I am just naive.

I too have puzzled over the economics of gay films. Two competing theories: 1.) somehow it leads to sex – either in exchange for giving people starring roles, or by having some party at finish, or from social signaling, or 2.) They have disproportionate influence within the industry (similar to politics), and people court this influence by making films that cater to them.

I’ve often been grossed out by unexpected gay references in mainstream films – sometimes going back into the ’70s – and occasionally in movies that were ostensibly made for kids, or at least young teenagers. I can only think that gays were behind it on some level.

Those girls are not original artists, but two actresses, who were hired to perform a specific character (anime pseudojapanese schoolgirl lesbians for clickbait).

When actors stop to receive a salary, as in Tatu’s case for a number of years, then they stop acting in the character they were hired to be. I.e. they speak as themselves, instead of fake Japanese anime kissing lesbian schoolgirls.

This is partly what allowed Tatu to be a relative peak of postsoviet pop – because it’s such a fake manufactured group, it had talented professional musicians writing their music and songs, and their songs were therefore quite good.

Pop music in Russia in the 2000s while highly cynical manufactured clickbait, was also more decentralized from the politicians, and postsoviet pop had original locally-specific melodies and instrumentation, which was like the accumulated capital that was developed by talented producers of postsoviet pop in the 1990s.

–

2000-2010 could be seen almost as a “Age of Tatu”, when Russian mainstream pop videos still has an original national sound, and Tatu were futuristically predicting the pseudojapanese aesthetics + nonbinary looking women, that would become later fashionable in the West in the decade 2010s.

2010-2020 I would say the trend of pop videos is a postmodernist “Age of Timati”, when mainstream rappers like Timati or Geegun, are Mountain Jews, or Bulgarians (e.g. Doni) or Ossetians, that pretend to be African Americans, and closely connected with politicians , and more self-serious stars were coming Belarus (e.g. Max Korzh)

If in beginning of the decade 2010s, there was an attempt to promote heterosexual versions of Tatu (e.g. Nyusha), by the end of the decade the direction of pop videos in Russia was postmodernist comedy clickbait to the computerized youth.

2020-2030 – the pop videos is going to turn to pure clickbait comedy for the increasingly computerized generation – what kind of omen is this rapper Morgenstern for the decade.

BTW, I have been wondering where Another_German_Reader and Another_Polish_Perspective fit into your eschatology of Unz. We are in the Kali Yuga, I believe? When Tatu puts on Christian airs?

Great comment, thanks.

I would argue that this mysterious feeling you cannot express in words is precisely that experience of the numinous 🙂 Words can only hint at it. Mystery, wonder, magic – these are terms that hint at something, but we know not what.

Your attempt to describe it is beautiful and gets at many aspects of it.

And no, I am not arguing for traditional religion – just this experience of wonder.

But perhaps the most important feeling that I try to recreate is the happiness that I felt as a teenager when I saw virgin mountain landscapes for the first time. I guess being in nature is for me a way to try to find happiness in life and at least to some extent it works.

Nature really Paradise Lost, isn’t it.

We evolved to be hunter gatherers, and in that kind of environment we find out greatest satisfaction.

I was car camping on a ledge overlooking this vast savanna like field dotted with scrub and some dwarf oak trees, with massive boulders strewn across the field, and the other side the mountains started.

In the cool early morning I would just set off exploring across this savannah, with no trail and no plan just to reach the mountains, and just wander. It was a completely different experience than hiking on a trail – “straight line, clear direction” – and I think, more satisfying. I was amazed how intuitively I was able to find my about and back to my car.

It was perfect hunter/gatherer terrain.

Btw, if you’re heading Southwest, might I recommend the Dragoon Mountains of southern Arizona? That is where I have been the past week.

Sublime scenery and a place of great spiritual power. It was in these mountains that the Apache Indians lived and fought, defeating the Spanish for centuries and staving off the encroachments of modern civilized life until final defeat.

So it’s one of the last stands of hunter-gatherers and life in the paradise that is nature against the dreariness of modern machine civilization 🙂

The spirit of Cochise and his band of happy warriors smiles benignly on all true-hearted lovers of nature who come into his realm 🙂

I drove down a BLM dirt road and accidentally found one of the most sublime camp spots I’ve ever been – if you end up going, I can give you the GPS coordinates its not on any map.

Enjoy wherever you end up going.

Yes, I am not religious in the traditional sense, and I have religious friends who object to my forays into nature as frivolous and having nothing to do with religion – I try and explain to them I am closer to something that might be described as divine in nature than I can ever be in the cities.

I am glad that your brand of traditional religion has retained this connection to nature. I love the old tradition of Catholic monasteries in lonely areas of great beauty.

ANNIVERSARY

Mike Whitney’s last Counterpunch article was about three years ago. Was there some sort of incident?

A girl I banged this summer, who was some 15 years my junior listened to these Russian rappers. It ain’t a bad cultural export. Slavic THOTs love it.

The greatest generally being that a sizeable enough minority or plurality of people really just despise the idea of letting others live lives that they do not agree with

This is a major problem, yes. I think comes from fear and insecurity.

Most people are not satisfied with their way of life, so to strengthen their faith in it they insist everyone live like them. People who don’t live like them threaten them.

If their way of life gave them genuine pleasure and satisfaction, there would be no threat in others not living like them. The rewards of their way of life would be self-evident – they would not other people to build their confidence they have chosen correctly.

But in fact different things make different people happy. I think the solution would be for people to live for pleasure (broadly defined) and not according to what society tells them is “valuable” – this way, they all discover what they find intrinsically satisfying, and will not be threatened by others doing what they find intrinsically satisfying.

I drove down a BLM dirt road and accidentally found one of the most sublime camp spots I’ve ever been – if you end up going, I can give you the GPS coordinates its not on any map.

Thanks. It sounds like a magnificent place but that’s too far away for the short weekend trip that I have planned. I’ll be somewhere around the Four Corners area.

Desert areas absolutely lend themselves to discovery and making your own route as you walk. Watch the rattlesnakes.

Fertility levels of some groups are heavily dependent on policies, see Denmark. pic.twitter.com/fpxBbGofV7

— Birth Gauge (@BirthGauge) October 6, 2020

Interesting.

Enjoy your weekend jaunt.

I left this morning for what is supposed to be some very rugged and little visited desert areas on the Mexican border. We shall see.

I disagree with your religious friends. Going to nature and contemplating it is very important to help achieve contemplation of God, and many serious Christian saints and mystics also taught about this. And this has hardly anything to do with the “mother nature” cult that even the current Pope adheres to, nor other hippie/new age movements.
The parish priest of the SSPX temple I go to is an alpinist. Every summer he rises the Aconguagua, the highest summit in the Americas. He also says it helps his spiritual life.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/26/statement-by-president-biden-on-the-anniversary-of-russias-illegal-invasion-of-ukraine/

Seven years ago today, Russia violated international law, the norms by which modern countries engage one another, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbor Ukraine when it invaded Crimea.

The United States continues to stand with Ukraine and its allies and partners today, as it has from the beginning of this conflict. On this somber anniversary, we reaffirm a simple truth: Crimea is Ukraine.

Aaron, I think I speak for everyone hear when I say we’re all just touched that in these moments of peak spiritual elevation – aka shroom ingestion – it’s us you think to share your insights with.

And to be honest, although I seldom agree with much of what you say, it’s sometimes just kinda fun to read along with you.

Lol.

Well….the light needs to shine where it’s darkest. Jesus hung out with prostitutes and outcasts, I hang out with the good people at Unz 🙂

Enjoy the read, my friend.

Nature’s okay, but really, four hours is the most that anybody should want to spend in nature, and even that is seriously pushing it. Personally, I start getting bored after fifteen minutes. Once you’ve seen two or three beaches or mountains or lakes, you’ve pretty much seen them all. I know each one is unique and all that, but that’s something you realize straight away and it doesn’t prevent the boredom from setting in.

What you do in nature anyway, just look at it? How many people can really do that all day though. That’s why we have picnics or go for swims or even just walks, because nature, of itself, is fundamentally boring and we need something to distract us when we’re in it. Personally, I think an underrated reason cities have attracted people for thousands of years is because we’re anxious to get away from nature and its blizzards, its heat waves, its stings, its snakebites, its swamps and its sands.

For me, the really humbling experience is to take in the splendor of the city from an elevated vantage point and reflect on the myriad benefits that have accrued to us from transcending nature’s meager bounty. Always remember: I could go three years without nature and not miss it, but could you really go three days without electricity?

…“We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. I may never in my life get to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it’s there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.”

…“The night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me; I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.”

…“In the mixture of starlight and cloud-reflected sunlight in which the desert world is now illuminated, each single object stands forth in preternatural though transient brilliance, a final assertion of existence before the coming of night: each rock and shrub and tree, each flower, each stem of grass, diverse and separate, vividly isolate, yet joined each to every other in a unity which generously includes me and my solitude as well.”

― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Here’s a very beautiful song: Midnight in the Desert by Crystal Gayle

Once you’ve seen two or three beaches or mountains or lakes, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

That’s exactly how I feel about cities.

Once you’ve been to several of them, what can you possibly expect to find different in another one? More buildings, streets, statues, churches, museums,…? Fine if that’s of interest to you but I’d gladly trade an early and comfortable retirement tomorrow in exchange for not visiting another city in my life. The only ones I would miss are Las Vegas and Donosti/San Sebastian, for different reasons, but it would be perfectly bearable.

To make matters worse, I was born in Europe and visited early on most of its major cities. I have spent enough hours visiting old churches, cathedrals, museums and historical monuments to last me the rest of my life.

With that said, I am not interested in preaching my way of life to anyone. I am OK if the vast majority of people feel like you do and I know plenty of them who do (although one of them couldn’t help feeling genuinely amazed when I took her to see the Delicate Arch near Moab, UT).

Besides, not everything in my life is nature and I would be very unhappy if that was all I had. Social life and family are at least as essential. I can even enjoy urban entertainment (bars, discos, casinos) as much as the next one but they are not as fulfilling to me as nature.

In summary, my only disagreement with you is this: “four hours is the most that anybody should want to spend in nature”. Like it or not, some of us have our brains wired very differently.

PS- The only one city of the entire US East Coast that I’m planning to visit again is Miami Beach (mostly for the beach and year-round warm waters) and the one that I hope I’ll never have to visit again is rodent-infested, dirty New York .

Song about the Church of Woke.

Thank you.

I read Desert Solitaire as a teenager and I remember it made a strong impression on me. I remember him writing about how the canyon country of Utah was for him, the ideal landscape, and I was intrigued.

Those quotes from the book are true and beautiful, and the music is lovely.

As I noted further up this thread: after Alexander Cockburn’s passing, Counterpunch has gone in the direction of being more establishment like on Russia related matters, along the lines of the Amy Goodman hosted Democracy Now.

An example of a hypocritically pious and ignorant Brit:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-9305463/Olympic-chiefs-slammed-British-cycling-gold-medallist-Callum-Skinner-Russia-stance.html

No outrage that clean Russian track and field athletes weren’t allowed to compete at the last summer Olympics. In addition, Russia athletes will be barred from competing in the upcoming world indoor championships.

I just saw the head of #CPAC on TV. He seems really gay. Flaming.

Don’t hate me; but Hawley seems a little gay (and a little autistic), too.

In addition, Russia athletes will be barred from competing in the upcoming world indoor championships.

As in the world in door track and field championships.

I guess if Counterpunch were to host an author who says that airplanes and cars are secret aliens from outer space that are a threat to Earth then the publication bears at least some responsibility for the quality of the works of the author? Does some webzine bear zero responsibility at all in terms of the quality of the articles and authors that it allows to be posted on its pages, that it as control over, with no obligation to police the quality of any articles posted? I mean if a webzine were to posts articles by an author about how penicillin for pets is a secret plot to turn their DNA into stone, should the owners of the webzine have some accountability with regards to the lack of the use of proper discretion in terms of which articles should be allowed to be posted? Are people categorically arguing as a policy that a website should not be able to exert some form of control over which articles by people it allows to be posted on its website, some of which may affect its reputation?

Say not counterpunch, say your local newspaper allows stories written by a reporter that a 100 mile asteroid is going to crash into earth tomorrow, should the editor not exercise some control over the articles that his reporters post?

Hey Anatoly,

You didn’t answer my question on the last open thread. If I stop contributing to your Patreon (because you said you have lots of money and don’t need it), will I still get your signed book for past donations if you ever get around to writing it?

That said, I might not stop contributing since this is pretty much one of the only sites that I read, I have money as well, and last week it has been worth it.

For anyone who doesn’t mind bad movies, I recommend the Russian movie “Blackout: Invasion Earth.” (2019) I heard the budget was only $5 million. If so, at that price, I would say it is more of a spectacle than most Chinese movies that have a budget of 4-6x.

I interpreted the ending as being a secretly based message.

Having worked with Norse and Elder Futhark iconography for years, I’m quite alert to the glyph shapes and their associations in the modern world and history.

So, why is the #CPAC2021 stage an Odal rune, and specifically one with serifs (or wings) that was used by the SS? pic.twitter.com/gc4HhtGA3n

— Hami (@hami) February 26, 2021

This one might have some legs.

When US leftists are paranoid right now, this provides all the Brown Scare they need.

One day YouTube will save millions of dollars in hosting fees by teaching people the simple right-click -> loop function.

Ah who am I kidding, plebs on reddit still take PHYSICAL FUCKING SCREENSHOTS of their monitors instead of hitting print key.

Really, Cyberpunk 2077 was trash? I read lots of good things about it as long as you get it for PC, where the bugs are minimal. Why was it bad exactly? Since it didn’t get overwhelmingly good reviews, I was thinking of skipping it this year anyways since there are lots of other games to catch up on. There was a Polish nationalist on Twitter who was quite proud of it too…

it’s as if there is an irreducible element – a group of people – in humanity working against happiness.

That sounds plausible.

Are people who are highly engaged politically generally happy? Are they generally successful and content in their personal lives? Are they psychologically stable? Are they people who would be regarded by others as pleasant people to be around?

Is it possible that political engagement is a mental illness?

And is it possible that a society in which huge numbers of people are passionately engaged in politics is actually a very sick society?

In a sane society people would pursue love or friendship or sex or art or just doing things like they like doing.

A major factor that works against human happiness is the desire to be useful (and politics is part of this unhealthy desire). We need to spend more time and energy on useless things. That’s why art is worth pursuing. It’s entirely useless. It exists merely for the pleasure of creating it or the pleasure of viewing it. Hobbies are useless, which is they’re worth doing. Going for a walk in the park or along the beach is a useless activity which is why (if you happen to enjoy such things) you should do so.

Trash is maybe pushing it. But it’s nothing special. And I don’t even care about the bugs.

The game is mostly linear with few branching paths. Very few real choices with consequences. Gameplay is mediocre. Nothing to do in the city.

The game clearly lacks many intended features and some parts are obviously placeholders. For example: the police in the game doesn’t chase after you, instead they just spawn a few meters behind you…

I guess being in nature is for me a way to try to find happiness in life and at least to some extent it works.

Being in nature makes me anxious and depressed. But a lot of people seem to enjoy it, so good luck to them.

On the whole I find more beauty in artificial things than in natural things. To me a gothic cathedral is more beautiful than a mountain. There are even some modernist buildings (such as Saarinen’s TWA terminal in New York) they I find more beautiful than forests.

Whatever floats your boat.

I used to look at the schedules or reviews of new films coming out at arthouse cinemas and the non-black ones often had a lesbian relationship (usually with two young, cute actresses) even if they were not otherwise specifically homosexual films (unlike gay films, which had their own separate genre).

I don’t really understand the reason before this. Obviously lesbianism does not actually exist, so unlike with gay films there is no sort of market for these.

Maybe the market is heterosexual men. If the movies in question involve lots of sex and nudity then the market is definitely heterosexual men. If the movies in question involve lots of angsting over relationships then the market is lesbians.

There was a whole genre of lesbian vampire movies back in the 70s, with lots of sex and nudity. They were aimed at heterosexual men.

Although I have come across a handful of heterosexual women who like 70s erotic lesbian vampire movies.

Maybe some women find depictions of lesbian sex less disturbing than depictions of heterosexual sex.

I assume these modern Hollywood movies are all about the emotional angst and there’s nothing lesbians love more than emotional angst.

Navalny survived the assassination attempt and set off a movement unlike any ever seen in history

Cities all feel very similar after a while, but I agree that there is something seriously missing in AaronB’s hypothesis. Humans are social and the greatest joys will only come from interactions with other humans, especially if you treat living in society as an ultimate ‘simulation’. I just enjoy When I was young I moved to a completely different city and enjoyed setting up a new life from basically nothing. I did have an ‘out’ of possibly moving back with my parents if I ever ran out of my meagre savings, but luckily didn’t have to use it.

I can probably last several days in nature and if you know a bit about rock formations or types of plants or insects, it can definitely capture your attention for a while. I’ve hiked on mountains and camped there, even though this was a while ago. But it is true that it is pretty unforgiving and modern humans can’t survive there. If you ever want to be stripped of your mystical regards for a city, go to a Japanese mountain and look at a Japanese city. There are probably few urban agglomerations more ugly than the Japanese city. Some say that this is because the Japanese see nature as an enemy that tries to kill them with earthquakes, tsunamis, torrential downpours and landslides, etc… and there is quite a bit of truth to that. It’s no surprise that the Japanese city is an ‘opposite’ aesthetic to the grandness of nature. True, Middle Eastern cities are way uglier, but they don’t have the majestic nature that is present in Japan right beside every ugly city, which creates quite the contrast.

You guys should try getting laid.

Most people are not satisfied with their way of life, so to strengthen their faith in it they insist everyone live like them. People who don’t live like them threaten them.

Yeah. It hasn’t always been the case, certainly not in every society, but it has been a characteristic feature of western civilisation since the 19th century.

It’s also a characteristic feature of Puritanism and Calvinism. Such people know that they’re the Elect and they know they’re good and righteous but they’re miserable and they’re enraged that all those wicked sinners are enjoying themselves. They must be stopped.

Puritans love misery, but mostly they love inflicting misery on others.

Since SJWs and Wokeists are a mutated variety of Puritan they share this mindset. They know they’re super-virtuous but they’re not really happy and they’re angry at the thought that the non-virtuous might be happy.

People think they’re doing what they want to do but they’re still unhappy and dissatisfied, so they’re threatened by anybody who has made different choices. And they get angry if those people who have made different choices seem happy.

The comments below that Twitter post are smooth like an inflated balloon. There is not one wrinkle expressed when they are all enabling each others’ beliefs that CPAC2021 is an openly Nazi event. This is impossible to differentiate from psychosis.

If you just know you’re good, without having to earn it through intense doubt, you will do a lot of bad. Like seeing yourself through glasses with a halo and angel wings etched on them, even when burning witches, you’ll look beatific.

Fertility of non-Western migrants went into steep decline when the Anders Fogh Rasmussen government introduced changes to family reunification migration, e.g. the 24-year-rule, meaning that amrriage migration is only allowed when both partners at least 24.

https://mobile.twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1313507391418368000

Can this really be the only thing that changed? Seems quite amazing if it is.

Fortunately (for the country) and unfortunately (for the sake of these statistics), MENAPT (Greater Middle East + Somalia) are only 55% of Denmark’s non-Western immigrants, so the birth rate of the more undesirable population is higher to some degree.

Hopefully when the government starts publishing data based on the new classifications we will know more.

I guess if Counterpunch were to host an author who says that airplanes and cars are secret aliens from outer space that are a threat to Earth then the publication bears at least some responsibility for the quality of the works of the author?

Did one of their authors actually argue this or are you just making up hypotheticals?

I don’t really find the writings of ex. Vltchek (too many “powerful takes”) or Hopkins (boring and repetitive) interesting, but their content seems quite in order with a magazine that is, at least ostensibly, supposed to be a kind of dissident, “anti-imperialist” outlet.

Given that we have seen other magazines (see The Intercept) that have been not only diverted but even turned actively against the original aspirations of its founders by more politically establishmentarian newcomers, it does not seem unreasonable to question the motives of the editors.

Ah okay, I misunderstood it I guess. I do enjoy reading the posts and derive value from them so thanks for that.

I still should probably shill out for the Gray Mirror as well.

By the way, this is not for everybody and is probably not worth it if you’re under 40, but to make more money, I suggest not drinking alcohol. I stopped completely six months ago, after a previous six months of drinking very little, since I just didn’t have the time and needed my brain to be working better at my job. The time thing didn’t work out since now I just sleep more than before, but brain is working better and I can focus more and get things done faster. As a side effect, I think I lost some weight, but definitely I’m not losing the ~100 dollars a month or more that was spent on alcohol previously. I do miss the social aspect of drinking with all sorts of strange and different people that I meet around here, but with the pandemic shutting bars, it’s not really much of a choice.

If only the rest of the world had copied New Zealand, then we’d have eliminated covid and there’d be no more lockdowns:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/27/new-zealand-auckland-to-go-into-seven-day-covid-lockdown

QAnon levels of schizophrenia.

The rest of the world consists of more than small island nations.

I know, but maybe they were just unlucky, there’s lots of other small island nations that were able to lockdown long and hard enough to get covid cases to 0 and then completely cut themselves off from the rest of the world, so that they’d never have to lockdown again:

https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2020/11/07/islanders-warned-that-jersey-could-be-heading-for-another-lockdown-as-active-cases-top-100/

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2021-01-23/guernsey-to-enter-lockdown

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2021-01-05/isle-of-man-re-enters-lockdown-after-fears-of-covid-spread-in-the-community

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-australia-56035668

only a covidiot would oppose such a strategy, what’s stopping the USA and Russia? The uk has just extended lockdown by another 4 months despite vaccinating nearly a third of the population.

On the whole I find more beauty in artificial things than in natural things. To me a gothic cathedral is more beautiful than a mountain.

I find that “organic-seeming” architecture made by people more connected to the natural world (such as the builders of the Gothic cathedrals) is more beautiful than modernist works made by people who are disconnected from the natural world.

Lockdowns are based on fake science.

https://www.bworldonline.com/its-final-lockdowns-dont-work/

Consider also that most “science” cannot be replicated and, therefor, cannot be considered legitimate science.

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241683

Some believe that the design distinction here is between one of a saving economy (gold-backed currency) and one of a debt economy (fiat currency.)

I think it is also true that the medieval world was more cultivated. For example, forest trees were pruned in such a way as to make poles (so that they took on an unnatural appearance.” A lot of natural grasses were cut for winter fodder. Though no doubt, it was earthier and less paved over.

I agree with your sentiments about NYC, but I think it would be fair to call the natural outdoor environment rodent-infested.

I mean, once I was sitting by a fire in the darkness and I heard a rustling behind me. I mistook it first for a mouse, and then a skunk, but it turned out to be close to a 40 lb porcupine (2nd biggest rodent in NA), and as I stood stock still, it came close enough to sniff the toe of my boot. Meanwhile, I remembered with horror, the tales of porcupines chewing up the boots that people left outside their tents to get at the salt on them.

All this talk of maximizing the phenotype IQ of blacks with expensive interventions (such as I believe even Molyneux advocates for) seems rather silly, IMO. It is probably impossible to move g, even if IQ can be nudged a tiny bit. The real efforts should be put into trying to modify black behavior. This would not necessarily be too hard or expensive. For example, get the media to stop valorizing them.
___
Ages ago, I recall reading a Nazi-era essay critical of the Superman comic. I wonder what Nazis would say about the rumored new movie to be produced. Directed by JJ Abrahms and written by Ta Nehisi Coates, and possibly starring a black Superman.

I’ve been curious about that area myself. I drove through Anza Borreago desert last weekend.

Very cool with its dramatic flatness and view of the Salton Sea coming down from the Peninsular range.

I like driving around California’s natural areas because you will always see at least a few things that makes you do a double take.

In this case it was seeing random solitary RVs parked in the desert, based near the mountains ranges. Another was the highway into the Salton Sea with a landscape which was a mini version of what you see at the Petrified National Forest- layered orange canyons with a flat top.

I kind of like nature to have some movement to it. Either the thing moves or I’m moving.
So if the scale is vast, like Death Valley. I like driving through it. If it’s on a medium scale, I like walking through it. Red Rocks Canyon, Mammoth Lakes are great places to hike. Really, any place with water works.

Red Rocks Canyon Trails is highly recommended. Very few people there. A profound 2 hour hike or longer if you want. Dramatic shifts in surfaces and sense of kinetics of mountains. Mostly sagebrush and cactus. Red columns mountains faces. Really beautiful. Another thing is, you can have the feeling of having the entire park to yourself.

На акции памяти в Воронеже какой-то неадекват снёс ногой портрет Бориса Немцова pic.twitter.com/Jpau6TNyKx

— Sarah ❌ Connor (@TheresNoFate) February 27, 2021

I find that “organic-seeming” architecture made by people more connected to the natural world (such as the builders of the Gothic cathedrals) is more beautiful than modernist works made by people who are disconnected from the natural world.

If you liked the organic elements of Gothic architecture, have you looked more at Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts?

Though the two related movements had different perspectives towards the past – with Art Nouveau seeking to create a new world and Arts and Crafts embracing mediaeval and folk traditions – they both incorporate natural themes in their works very beautifully.

Yes, those are very nice also. Things took a wrong turn when people became too abstract and divorced from nature.

What is the correct atomic policy for atomophiles to advocate for, if one is realistic about dysgenics? Are ultra-high IQs only needed to design power plants? Not to build, or maintain them? Or deal with the waste products? Or should we be piling money into research now, for energy and rocket engines, to take advantage of the bigger smart fraction we have now?

Or must an atomophile (who does not want to destroy the world) necessarily be a eugenicist?
______
It strikes me that the ban on the spread of nuclear weapons is, whether by accident or design, possibly the only non-blankslatist policy advocated on an international level.

Sizeable chance that the image circulated a day before isn’t fake and his wife does have a German passport. Some groups are saying that the number on the document does match to a woman with the name Yuliya Navalny, in Germany. The number more important than the photo or signature for finding the truth here

On the matter of media buying into negatively inaccurate stereotypes along the lines of the Counterpunch piece I linked further up this thread:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/02/27/putting-artemi-panarin-situation-in-proper-perspective/

Sad news to share with any music buffs out there. The very talented mandolist/violinist Peter Ostroushko recently passed away after trying to recover from a stroke that he had two years ago. He had a long and distinguished musical career, inluding session work with Bob Dylan, stints on Austin City Limits, work with several symphony orchestras around the world, a regular on the ‘Prairie Home Companion”, and the scoring of some of Ken Burns masterful documentaries regarding American history and culture. He even once played in a concert in Moscow. A mainstay in the Ukrainian-American community of the Twin Cities, he’ll surely be missed. On a personal note, he was one of the first persons to influence me in my spiritual walk with Jesus Christ. Vichna Pamiat Peter.

https://www.startribune.com/peter-ostroushko-virtuoso-musician-with-everyone-from-bob-dylan-to-minnesota-orchestra-dies/600027280/

In St. Petersburg, anyone can freely vaccinate in shopping centers. There are no queues, the points accept hundreds of patients a day (although they are designed for twice as many). The situation is about the same in all cities of Russia. This is (to a large extent) the result of the anti-vaccination campaign that the media controlled by Washington conducted in Russia

Would that artwork be considered as HumansOfFlat?

Speaking of North American musicians of Ukrainian ancestry, have you ever listened to Sarah Jarosz ?

Diversity rhetoric is really incentivized within the West, so that it infects practically everything, to mind-numbing levels.

But if you go to the Middle East, the incentives are different, and the rhetoric is all about diversifying the economy and planning for the future, when oil runs out. It is imbued into everything, seemingly to the same degree. Though, it appears more sensible at first, it is really not because it is also based on blank-slatism.

I mean anyone who thinks the UAE will develop an indigenous space economy is bat-shit insane. Kenya has a better chance leasing space for someone to build a space elevator, putting a tax on everything going up, and demanding that Kenyans do all the loading, and catering work for what foreign workers are actually needed.

My kids and I once spent about 15 minutes happily close to a porcupine peacefully munching on grass. We got close enough to touch it, but did not do so. Interesting how perceptions can be different – nothing horrible crossed our minds.

Here’s Peter being interviewed hanging out with a Russian guitar friend of his. He’s at home, and there’s a clip of him in his backyard garden inspecting his tomatoes and beets. There were a lot of bumper crop gardens in our Ukrainian neighborhood. I always had one going to0…

так як мед смакують!

Quite a strong powerful and melancholic voice. Reminds me a bit of a young Stevie Nicks…

Interesting how perceptions can be different – nothing horrible crossed our minds.

Porcupines move fairly slowly, you should not be very worried, if you encounter them in daylight.

However, they have bad eyesight. If you encounter them at night, there is a good chance, they will not be aware of you. I wasn’t worried as I was observing it, expecting it to walk by me. I did not expect it to come close, and I mean close.

The end of my feet were tilted upwards, so it could have easily fit my toe inside its mouth – I don’t believe it was even aware that I was there – just my boot. Meanwhile, I thought it was too close for me to move suddenly. I am not talking about feet, but <1 inch, like kissing my foot close.

You might not have an appreciation of the biting power of rodents, but I do. Rats can chew through concrete or steel. I've seen squirrels chew through old growth oak boards. And I've seen beavers chew through trees. One beaver nearly killed Lewis and Clark's dog. And porcupines can kill dogs with their quills – they work their way deeper, into the organs. Probably not great to have in your ankle, when you are in the middle of the woods.

Ng Man-tat (Ngo Manh Dat in Vietnamese) is dead since yesterday due to cancer!
He was the famous Uncle Tat character who was always with Stephen Chow in HK cinema.

I loved this man’s movies with Stephen Chow, God of Cookery, Prince of Beggars. It’s really sad reading his career after his parting with Stephen Chow, such is the life of many famous stars in HK cinema.

Rest in Peace!

What is the correct atomic policy for atomophiles to advocate for, if one is realistic about dysgenics? Are ultra-high IQs only needed to design power plants? Not to build, or maintain them? Or deal with the waste products?

As I define it, only “ultra” high IQ to design them. To build to spec and run them, significant IQ, plus a culture that’s compatible with the domain, which for example excludes Japan, realized long before Fukushima. To maintain, maybe not “ultra,” but pretty high IQ for some of the problems that can arise. Waste products are fairly easy if you ignore recycling which you shouldn’t, encase them in something really durable, bury and wait 600 years, by which time they’ll be no more radioactive than the ore from which the fuel was mined.

Societal and national capabilities for building them can be lost “overnight,” see the US, and now France, or so I hear after it busted up its old organization that did that. Counties like Germany can also just go insane and believe everything can be powered by solar and windmills, and decide nuclear is too dangerous even though they’re very much not Japanese.

only a covidiot would oppose such a [total isolation, lockdown till it’s died out, then normal life except for the isolation] strategy, what’s stopping the USA and Russia? The uk has just extended lockdown by another 4 months despite vaccinating nearly a third of the population.

Indeed, but for the West’s ruling trash globalism and importing hordes of low IQ Third Worlders is a religion you might say; I don’t know about Russia. As for the U.K., they’re trying an experiment where they give everyone a single jab ASAP, with the booster at many as 12 weeks from them. Not supported by the mRNA companies which simply didn’t test that regimen, but there’s a good chance this is mostly harmless, and could be much better for the AZ/Oxford disappointment. Which means a large fraction of that nearly one third aren’t yet properly vaccinated.

Since SJWs and Wokeists are a mutated variety of Puritan they share this mindset. They know they’re super-virtuous but they’re not really happy and they’re angry at the thought that the non-virtuous might be happy.

One way in which SJWs are mutated puritans is that they have absorbed a certain amount of ‘classic’ Marxist and Hegelian beliefs. One of these is that the existence, and happiness, fulfillment etc. of any human individual is dependent on the collectivity and cannot exist or be realised outside it. Similar to the paraphrase of Hegel ideas that the individual is to the state as the eye is to the human head and body, if the eye is severed from its parent body it is dead and cannot function.

This is one reason they are preoccupied by controlling everyone’s ideas and behaviour, because they believe it is the only way in which the correct social/collective conditions can be created for anyone to be fully happy. I suspect they pick up ideas like this through the literature and ideological material they study, it is an interesting aspect to SJWism that doesn’t seem to get the attention it should.

Ages ago, I recall reading a Nazi-era essay critical of the Superman comic. I wonder what Nazis would say about the rumored new movie to be produced. Directed by JJ Abrahms and written by Ta Nehisi Coates, and possibly starring a black Superman.

It would be something like: We told you this is what they will do and what your children will end up watching.

FFS Mr Hack/ Oscar Pistorious ( the implication being that I am like Oscar Peterson and you the exact opposite) – can you stop with the fake news BS of “Ukrainian community. ”

All you are thinking is Banderetard 1940s/50s Nazi fugitive, CIA smuggled lowlifes who went to America.
There has never existed such a concept as “Ukrainian community”…. this is why hugely embarrassing for these cretins (as I have written before) there is not a single place in America named after the “homeland” of these fake communities. All there is…. Russian world places named after expatriate settled areas. In America all the other European settled communities have these places….. Khokholand has not been registered.

What there was though is the Austrian intelligence created death cult that was created in the early 20th century that was called “Ukrainian nationalism”

Ostroushko , or if not this ape then definitely his parents are experiencing incineration in hell at the moment for their disgusting Banderite evil activities.

Why am I taking such a negative tone to this man?

I don’t like you working for Austrian intelligence so insidiously in supporting this sick cult dishonestly. Your using fake music sincerity as an outlet for khokholism. He wasn’t even that good. It struck me once when you ascribed the ex US Open tennis second place Rusedski this fake ethnicity of “Ukrainian”. I was thinking would Mr Hack ever refer to the very high quality and world-class tennis player Nikolai Davydenko as “Ukrainian”? Then I realised of course not (he is from Lugansk).

Or the Immortal legend of Yuri Vlasov, a hero of mine, great mind and inspiration to Arnold Schwarzenegger ( who wrote brilliant tribute to him)? Of course not because the idea of Khokholism is a big fake.

VIchna Pamiat

“oh no” what could that mean ? ukrop are Russian are 2 “different languages” LOL.

Cmon melanf…. you are incorrect. I don’t know what it is for SP, but for much of the country antibody tests are an absolute requirement for being allowed to take the vaccine(if have antibodies then can’t vaccinate) . I think our vaccination rate is good, but antitel tests make it pointless to say are rates are low. Also don’t forget that many doctors don’t like mixing vaccines for different diseases so close to each in date.

Look at the facts…. we had nearly 80 million people take the flu vaccine last year. That has to be one of the highest rates on the planet. We are a country of frequent mass international travel to exotic/nontemporate locations (places that require or recommend to take various vaccines before travel, which most of us do). We are a country completely different to all the other post-Soviet countries in the last 20 years in that our rates of vaccination, incidence of deaths or illnesses from the diseases like TB, Measles, polio etc, are significantly less exactly because we are less skeptic and more sophisticated on these issues than the other post- Soviet states (notably ukrop and Gruzia).
Although 1 covid test does not mean 1 test per person…. we do have a very high rate of testing… which again shows that people can’t be that reluctant to vaccinate if they are are so eager to be tested!

result of the antivaccination campaign that the media controlled by Washington conducted in Russia

Vaccination must be going great because advertising on TV or on street is negligible!

This is funny because hopeless liberast scum in Russia have permanently and shamefully discredited themselves even worse than usual…. by nearly all running like rats to get the SputnikV vaccine from the “regime” BEFORE the Lancet endorsement of phase 3! I couldn’t think of more idiotic, self-discrediting tactics from these clowns.

👍

Anyone know if there is a Chinese aphorism something like “an empty house collapses the fastest?” I heard it in a Chinese movie, and thought it was pretty clever, but ever since it has been bothering me, like a tune stuck in my head, just to know whether they wrote it for the movie or whether it is an old saying.

It had a context in the movie, but here is what I was thinking: a regular fire drives out moisture in the air. Without the fire, the beams get damp and rot, and so collapse.

Use to happen regularly with small cottages in Ireland. And I recall reading a book by a Tiananmen agitator, where he afterward escaped into the countryside and had to have a fire going for three days to drive out the damp of the uninhabited cottage he occupied.

I find that “organic-seeming” architecture made by people more connected to the natural world (such as the builders of the Gothic cathedrals) is more beautiful than modernist works made by people who are disconnected from the natural world.

That’s a valid preference, although it’s not my preference.

I see nature as ugly and depressing and I see art as a valiant attempt to create beauty in an ugly world. At least that’s how I see the function of art.

Of course the artistic establishment stopped believing in any kind of beauty a hundred years ago.

But some modernist architects (and I emphasise some) did still manage to create beauty. Most just created ugliness, but not all.

I don’t dislike “organic-seeming” architecture. An artist (or an architect) can take the ugliness of nature and create something beautiful out of it.

Natural things are more beautiful when the chaos of nature is moulded into some kind of order. Forests are ugly, but formal gardens are beautiful.

I don’t subscribe to the Cult of Nature, which I consider to be one of the many pernicious legacies of the Romantic Movement.

I see nature as ugly and depressing

Few things are more beautiful than a mature forest. I don’t think anything humans have ever created can compare with that.

You’re very sick in the mind and soul, Gerard. Peter Ostroushko’s father fought valiantly for the Soviet army during WWII, and lost a leg fighting at Stalingrad against the Germans. There, do you feel completely foolish now? You should, you heartless and stupid SOB.

Few things are more beautiful than a mature forest. I don’t think anything humans have ever created can compare with that.

It’s a cultural preference. Before the Romantic Movement came along nobody would have agreed with you.

You’re certainly entitled to your cultural preference. I like the fact that people have different cultural preferences. It makes life interesting.

When it comes to aesthetics there is no objective truth.

We’ve been heavily indoctrinated into the Romantic viewpoint on nature for the last couple of centuries. That doesn’t make the Romantic viewpoint wrong, but it doesn’t make it right either. There are differing aesthetic tastes and we should never assume that the aesthetic taste that happens to be culturally dominant at the moment is some kind of eternal truth.

The aesthetic tastes of westerners prior to the rise of the Romantic Movement were so radically different from ours that it is difficult even to comprehend such a viewpoint, but their tastes were just as valid as ours. Just as the aesthetics of other civilisations (such as Japanese civilisation) are radically different from ours but just as valid.

I have no desire to convince you that my aesthetic tastes are superior to yours. They just happen to be different.

I thought he was 1940s/50s Bandera diaspora Mr Hack. Happy to apologise and discipline myself, IF you can adequately show what you say is correct. Definite 40s/50s emigration to US of his family, standard Galician views did suggest to me no Red Army connection, but if wrong then I’m wrong.

Even if not, you are too harsh….. I was going to say I could play the mandolin with my feet superior to Peter with his hands, but because of my inate humanity I respectfully decided to not make that comment!

BTW saddened to hear about Chick Corea – a true great. The talented Ostroushko does appear to be a pleasant guy, if you knew him.

I see nature as ugly and depressing and I see art as a valiant attempt to create beauty in an ugly world. At least that’s how I see the function of art.

To each his own. Thinking of the world as nan essentially ugly place seems rather depressing, though.

Natural things are more beautiful when the chaos of nature is moulded into some kind of order. Forests are ugly, but formal gardens are beautiful.

People have the capacity to make nature more beautiful but how can one deny the beauty of a mature forest with massive trees, the smell of pines or maples (particularly after a rain), etc.?

This is in northern New England:

The old formal gardens were made by people who were still connected to nature, hence their beauty.

I don’t subscribe to the Cult of Nature, which I consider to be one of the many pernicious legacies of the Romantic Movement

This is a very good point. But the Cult of Reason also lacked a certain balance…

It’s a cultural preference. Before the Romantic Movement came along nobody would have agreed with you.

It has nothing cultural about it, I come from the Soviet cultural environment – a technicist culture if there ever was one, it is just that I am able to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the natural patterns and shapes.

One should be aware that a single living cell is complex enough that it takes a high computational capacity to even attempt to simulate that.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/to-model-the-simplest-microbe-in-the-world-you-need-128-computers/260198/

People think that living things are simple and boring, but that’s because they are used to live in human-built concrete jungle.

Cmon melanf…. you are incorrect. I don’t know what it is for SP, but for much of the country antibody tests are an absolute requirement for being allowed to take the vaccine(if have antibodies then can’t vaccinate) .

Where is this required? When I was vaccinated, they asked me only my last name – and nothing else (they didn’t even require documents). People I know have been vaccinated without any tests. From other parts of the country, people write the same thing – tests are not required. Here is the official instruction:
“PCR testing before vaccination is carried out only if there is documented contact with a COVID-19 patient and the person has any clinical manifestations of the disease”

vaccination is slow because people are slow to go to vaccination centers, not because of the tests

Perhaps it depends on location. My in-laws were tested prior to vaccination, and found to their surprise that they had antibodies. The slight cold they had a couple of months earlier, that they dismissed due to mildness of symptoms, turned out to have been Covid.

I read an interesting article about mask-wearing in Japan. It has been highly prevalent since, well, since the pandemic 100 years ago. The reason for mask acceptance that surprised me the most: The Japanese tend to be introverted, and often they enjoy a feeling of being socially walled-off inside one’s mask. I can imagine how, packed into my sardine-can subway car, aside from feeling protected from pathogens a few inches away, I would also feel psychologically protected.

By the way, here in California, a large cohort of people do not wear the mask over the nose. I was curious whether this is the case in Japan, and so I performed an image search. My conclusion is that not wearing the mask over the nose is virtually unknown.

Perhaps it depends on location. My in-laws were tested prior to vaccination, and found to their surprise that they had antibodies.

And when were they vaccinated? Initially, it was supposed to vaccinate only those who do not have antibodies (to save the vaccine). now there are many more vaccines than those who want to be vaccinated and vaccinate everyone who wants to be vaccinated

You can play the mandolin better than this? You really are the consummate BS artist.

Man and Nature

“It’s a cultural preference. Before the Romantic Movement came along nobody would have agreed with you.” – You are full of it. I could say that communist and Jewish anti nature materialism is talking through you. I could say that you would like to pave up with asphalt the all of Siberia if it was up to you. I could say that “American pastoral” by Philip Roth is a good exemplification of Jewish fear and apprehension of nature because for Jews nature is goyish.. But I won’t. Instead I will say that you have no original thought of your own. You are a pretentious bore.

Thinking of the world as nan essentially ugly place seems rather depressing, though.

I don’t think that way. I think of nature as ugly but I can find lots of beauty in the man-made environment. Some people can’t. I’m not accusing you of this, but there are people who just have a knee-jerk reaction against man-made environments. I have a knee-jerk reaction against natural environments!

The old formal gardens were made by people who were still connected to nature, hence their beauty.

They were still connected to nature, but not in any kind of modern sense. They saw nature as something that needed to be tamed, controlled and reduced to order. Being close to nature they recognised its dark side. Many people today romanticise Nature because they’re not compelled to confront it the way people of the past were.

I don’t subscribe to the Cult of Nature, which I consider to be one of the many pernicious legacies of the Romantic Movement

This is a very good point. But the Cult of Reason also lacked a certain balance…

Yes. There’s room for both approaches. I take things a bit far in one direction but I have no problems with people who tend in the other direction.

Diversity is our strength.

I thought of you and your young family last night after watching this very good Ukrainian fantasy film, ‘The Stronghold”. I was impressed with the overall quality of this film, the special effects were as good as anything Pixar/Disney/Marvel put out. The story line is good and the acting is adequate too. Family friendly that I think that your kids would greatly enjoy. You can watch it for free through YouTube on your large Samsung TV. The print is good too, if not 4K then definitely some kind of high definition.

It has nothing cultural about it, I come from the Soviet cultural environment – a technicist culture if there ever was one, it is just that I am able to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the natural patterns and shapes.

It’s still a cultural influence, whether you accept the prevailing cultural view or react against it.

I’m certainly aware that I’m to some extent reacting against the modern western Cult of Nature. I also admit to being a contrarian. Whatever the prevailing view is, I’m going to regard it with scepticism.

I could say that communist and Jewish anti nature materialism is talking through you.

Instead I will say that you have no original thought of your own.

Seeing things as communist and Jewish plots is so dazzlingly and breathtakingly original.

I have two hobbies: reading obscure books and walking in the woods. If you do not like walking in the woods I will not bore you. But this might be of passing interest: in The Greeks and the Irrational by Eric Dodds he offers as a passing and insignificant observation that in ancient times almost all experience by men of divine inspiration or divine experience or the transcendental occurred by old guys walking by themselves in the hills or in the mountains. Dodds was an atheist and this meant nothing to him. He has a preliminary apologetic disclaimer like he is sure this bit of trivia would interest almost nobody.

Lesbianism obviously does exist. It’s not so exclusive as male homosexuality, but there are women out there who do have sex with other women.

it’s sometimes just kinda fun to read along with you.

It improved my quality of life when I started scrolling over those comments. But, to each his own.

Walking in nature is a good thing, but only if it’s not a totally wild nature. You don’t want bears and hungry wolves around.

Coleridge’s advice to his son Hartley: A life close to nature, my boy!
(Midnight Frost among other works contains such advice.)

(Forgive me, Harvard and the rest of the “refreshed”-literature crowd, for
the reference to Coleridge.)

Speaking of nature, Peggy Noonan, in today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, wrote that New York City has “the greatest” parks. I would have thought it might be Yellowstone, or Yosemite, or thousands of other parks that are not Central Park. It would be difficult to find a better example of progressive close-mindedness and contempt for deplorables.

Oh dear, perhaps you ought to have clicked the links. All those examples are countries that have attempted such a thing, declared success only to have outbreaks and subsequent lockdowns again,… and again……and again. They’ve also painted themselves into a corner as the likely endgame of all of this for most of the world is that corona will become endemic, defanged by vaccines quite soon in developed countries, a few years away in the rest; it’s going to be politically very difficult for them to open. Quite frankly, any benefit from reduced immigration to developed countries in such a scenario is more than counted by citizens of those countries having less freedom to travel than a medieval peasant (Australia actually has commie exit visas).

Double post, please delete

Lesbianism obviously does exist. It’s not so exclusive as male homosexuality, but there are women out there who do have sex with other women.

It exists but it obviously has little or nothing in common with male homosexuality. Which is hardly surprising given the enormous differences between male and female sexuality.

Most of the lesbians I’ve known (and I’ve known a lot) slept with men from time to time. And quite a few ended up in permanent relationships with men. There are a lot of “lesbian until the right man comes along” lesbians. But some lesbians seem to remain lesbians.

Aesthetics are subjective, yes you are right, I myself find beauty both in nature and in the works of human ingenuity.

They were still connected to nature, but not in any kind of modern sense. They saw nature as something that needed to be tamed, controlled and reduced to order. Being close to nature they recognised its dark side. Many people today romanticise Nature because they’re not compelled to confront it the way people of the past were.

This is so true, for people of the past nature was something dangerous and wild, to be tamed by human hands. Romanticist notion of nature was born later.

there are women out there who do have sex with other women

Women can’t have sex with each other

What are commonly known as lesbians (i.e. cohabiting middle-aged spinsters) do not even pretend to (‘Lesbian bed death’).

What is depicted in these films as lesbianism (i.e. hot, feminine 20-30 year old women passionate for one another) does not exist. I have never met a genuine lesbian in my life. The head of the LGBTQ (etc) society at my university was a supposed ‘lesbian’ yet had a boyfriend at the time and for several years previously and I once recognised her at a nightclub snogging another man. From what I gathered, her one lesbian experience consisted of kissing her best friend once at a party in her last year of school.

Animals usually avoid humans the best they can. They know we are a source of trouble.

Speaking of nature, Peggy Noonan, in today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, wrote that New York City has “the greatest” parks.

These people don’t know what wilderness is. Their spirits have been tamed to such an extent that they imagine nothing as beautiful as their own cages.

They are human hamsters threading in their spinning wheels.

When I visited NY I truly marveled at how anyone could willingly live there. I have the same feeling now about Moscow where I was born. I can still enjoy small provincial towns and villages, but the megalopolises are such an agressive environment…

Ancient pagans everywhere did not see nature as evil. They saw it as the norm and did not feel the need to classify it as good or bad.

This is so true, for people of the past nature was something dangerous and wild, to be tamed by human hands. Romanticist notion of nature was born later.

Many groups of people also considered mountains holy, believe nature is full of spirits, etc. Maybe this is all consistent with the idea of nature being tamed, but it seems strange to me. Certainly in visual arts one can find an emphasis upon the vastness of mountains long before the Romantic movement. I don’t see much sign of taming in most mountain paintings. I would also add that people can be thrilled by danger.

I can go along with the idea that people who are living an easy life can afford the luxury of admiring scenes etc. But I think dfordoom (as usual) is overgeneralizing.

I can of course appreciate both natural and man made objects, although I am firmly in the camp that the natural world is more beautiful. To me, preferring a painting or a building to a natural landscape is like preferring a painting of a beautiful woman to the real thing. I could come up with intellectual reasons for the idea, like a painting could be made to have less imperfections etc., but I can’t actually fathom believing such a thing. To my puritanical mind, the idea seems depraved.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/52uot1y9xb0?start=343&end=420

When it comes to aesthetics there is no objective truth.

This claim seems dubious to me. People’s perception of beauty seems to at least be partly objective. For example is the appreciation of symmetry, which is an objective, mathematical principle.

Many groups of people also considered mountains holy, believe nature is full of spirits, etc. Maybe this is all consistent with the idea of nature being tamed, but it seems strange to me. Certainly in visual arts one can find an emphasis upon the vastness of mountains long before the Romantic movement. I don’t see much sign of taming in most mountain paintings. I would also add that people can be thrilled by danger.

This all is true, but you really couldn’t walk freely in the forests or mountains before the 19th century, they were everywhere full of beasts and sometimes vagabonds. We can’t even fathom how dangerous places they were. Even in thinly populated modern countries like Sweden, Russia, Finland bear and wolf populations are carefully kept small and in check. Wolfs and Bears are not stupid, their mentality must nowadays be quite different of those wolves and bears of the past, who were against men armed with bows and polearms. Anyway in my knowledge Medieval Europeans didn’t paint any landscape paintings depicting mountains or forests like Chinese or Japanese did, even during renaissance intricate depictions of nature were just a background art for important people. I don’t know exactly what was the Orthodox attitude towards the nature in the olden times, but I know very well that for Protestants Nature was something given by God to Man, so that Man could rule the nature, tame and control it, so that he could forge order out of chaos.

I myself have quite utilitarian attitude with the nature, I grew up in country where there are lots of forests and nature, as did both of my parents, beginning from my childhood years I have spent lots of time in the forests, so to me they dont have anything special in them, in army we had long training camps in forest, living in small tents during winter in a very cold climate near the sea, after such I cant enjoy camping much, why I should force myself to live again like some filthy animal? Camping in nature is no fun, but trekking is nice, especially if you have a cottage where you can spend your nights. Best experience is when faith, sport and beauty meet, which is for me the Buddhist areas of Inner Asia, where the land does not just have a natural beauty in it, but also there’s a Sacral Geometry, or how you say it in English? You know Holy mountains, lakes, caves and small temples and trekking to such places where Buddhist sages and saints have lived, in such circumstances my trekking has a spiritual significance, its not just only a sport or having a fun as a tourist, but a pilgrimage!

One persistent point that anti-vaxxers make and which I have no real response to though is why Putin hasn’t publicly taken Sputnik V himself.
I suppose that as a religious conservative boomer he might well be an anti-vaxxer himself although one who doesn’t want to signal it.

This is unlikely. It was Putin who pushed for vaccination in an accelerated manner (which was the subject of attacks by liberals). The ROC officially supports vaccination, the second person in the church (Metropolitan Hilarion) who was ill with covid then (after recovery) was vaccinated in September to give an example to others.

Most likely Putin has some health problems that he hides from the public. Otherwise, we will have to admit that he is a member of a very strange sect that approves vaccinating everyone else, but prohibits vaccination for their co-religionists

Probably it depended on which kind of spirits inhabited the place, but I was writing about later development of European man, the prevalent attitude of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, that the nature is something to be tamed.

This all is true, but you really couldn’t walk freely in the forests or mountains before the 19th century, they were everywhere full of beasts and sometimes vagabonds. We can’t even fathom how dangerous places they were.

Animals are afraid of humans. For hundreds of thousands of years, they are genetically accustomed to fear humans as the most terrible predator. In this case, even the reserve “Cedar Pad” (in the Far East of Russia) where there are many tigers, leopards and black bears, it is quite safe for humans.

Here is an exception – polar bears are not afraid of people (because they have almost no contact with them), and where they are, you have to put bars on the windows

Wolves were really dangerous for people in ancient times, in Primorsky Krai theres probably only couple hundred Tigers and Leopards in area of 150 000 sq km, so statistically speaking you have a quite small chance to encounter one, unlike with wolves in premodern Europe, that had much larger populations, even in Ireland and England they were legendary for the danger they possessed for humans.

This all is true, but you really couldn’t walk freely in the forests or mountains before the 19th century, they were everywhere full of beasts and sometimes vagabonds. We can’t even fathom how dangerous places they were. Even in thinly populated modern countries like Sweden, Russia, Finland bear and wolf populations are carefully kept small and in check. Wolfs and Bears are not stupid, their mentality must nowadays be quite different of those wolves and bears of the past, who were against men armed with bows and polearms.

Yes, walking alone in a dense forest was probably not a great idea.

Anyway in my knowledge Medieval Europeans didn’t paint any landscape paintings depicting mountains or forests like Chinese or Japanese did, even during renaissance intricate depictions of nature were just a background art for important people. I don’t know exactly what was the Orthodox attitude towards the nature in the olden times, but I know very well that for Protestants Nature was something given by God to Man, so that Man could rule the nature, tame and control it, so that he could forge order out of chaos.

The Church held landscape paintings in low regard. This is why medieval Europe lacked landscape paintings. The respect for landscape paintings to a large extent is a result of German culture, like with the Danube school, and later Romanticism(which was also British), even Durer did some earlier. It hasn’t much to do with Protestant or Catholic divisions. Most good things in western Europe were created by Germans.

Wolves were really dangerous for people in ancient times,

Wolves attack humans only in the rarest of cases. Cars are much more dangerous than wolves – crossing the street at a green light, we risk more than during a walk in the woods with wolves.

n Primorsky Krai theres probably only couple hundred Tigers and Leopards in area of 150 000 sq km

The Cedar Pad Nature Reserve is a place where there are really a lot of tigers and leopards in a small area. But if you go there for a walk you will not see these predators as they will avoid meeting people

Central Park is really beautiful though, not a formal garden, but cultivated nature at its best. Just ignore the rats and crowds.

Women can’t have sex with each other

What are commonly known as lesbians (i.e. cohabiting middle-aged spinsters) do not even pretend to (‘Lesbian bed death’).

What is depicted in these films as lesbianism (i.e. hot, feminine 20-30 year old women passionate for one another) does not exist.

To a certain extent that’s true. As I said in an earlier comment lesbianism bears no resemblance whatsoever to male homosexuality. Male homosexuality is mostly about sex. Lesbianism is mostly about hyper-intense emotional dramas. It’s all about the relationships. The sex is a minor part of it and yes, in many cases sex is an almost insignificant part of it.

I have never met a genuine lesbian in my life. The head of the LGBTQ (etc) society at my university was a supposed ‘lesbian’ yet had a boyfriend at the time and for several years previously and I once recognised her at a nightclub snogging another man.

Most of the lesbians I’ve known felt sexual attraction towards men and I’ve heard lesbians admit that as far as physical pleasure was concerned sex with men was a lot better than sex with other women.

But you have to remember that female sexuality in general bears no resemblance to male sexuality. For women sex and emotions are inseparable. For men sex and emotions are two different things that happen to overlap.

There used to be a huge gulf between the “bar dykes” and the “political dykes” – there’s no question that for the vast majority of the “political dykes” being a lesbian is mostly a political statement. Most of them are in fact heterosexual. That’s what has always fuelled their anger. They’re at war with themselves. They’re usually very psychologically unstable. It’s the “political dykes” who attracted the most attention.

The “bar dykes” usually had very little interest in politics, usually got along extremely well with men and did actually seem to be sexually attracted to women although the sexual attraction was always hopelessly entangled with emotional attraction (which is usually true of heterosexual women).

I have never met a genuine lesbian in my life. The head of the LGBTQ (etc) society at my university was a supposed ‘lesbian’ yet had a boyfriend at the time and for several years previously and I once recognised her at a nightclub snogging another man. From what I gathered, her one lesbian experience consisted of kissing her best friend once at a party in her last year of school.

LGBT Identification Rises to 5.6% in Latest U.S. Estimate

Notice the rise in “bisexuals”

In any case, basic point that catching Corona is worse than getting a vaccine stands, esp. if you DO have preexisting health problems.

According to the media, Putin lives in the strictest quarantine, and the few people who contact him pass tests for the crown every day

Well, my experience is different-although my region had relatively low deliveries of the vaccine until 3 weeks before now. I am probably biased from the situation 1 month before in my region (antitel test required) when I was motivated to get first dose in clinic but not, just as you say, applicable now – and certainly not to the places of higher availability as SP and Moscow.

I would say that rules say its still recommended to get antibody test before and to not do vaccine if already had illness. Did they not at least ask if you have had an antitel test?

Still, the following things are relevant:

1. Very high rate of flu vaccinations in 2020 (75M+),which I would be very surprised if other white countries have a higher rate, does not indicate skepticism

2. Seeing or hearing absolutely zero advertising encouraging to get SputnikV vaccine on road, TV, radio, papers, at work or anywhere does suggest the government at not seeing low vaccinations level

3. If you have antibodies or already had the disease then it is a complete waste of resources and time to get the vaccine for the next 4-5 months

4. Different vaccines like flu are recommended to not mix with coronavirus for time gap of less than 2 months

5. Next season for coronavirus is expected only in autumn (though would need to receive both doses by 4-6 weeks before then to have developed immunity), so there is no rush

6. For my western friends, antibody tests seem to be nonexistent, at least compared to us.

7. You can add in weather and more places open in Russia compared to most western countries (bars, shops, schools…. that because they are unused are now places for vaccination in west) as reasons for illusion of non vaccinations in Russia. OK, your experience is in big shopping centre an

He is possibly having some health issues. Possibly something impacting immunity.

Certainly in visual arts one can find an emphasis upon the vastness of mountains long before the Romantic movement.

I do think the Romantic Movement marked a radical change in the way people looked at nature.

I can go along with the idea that people who are living an easy life can afford the luxury of admiring scenes etc. But I think dfordoom (as usual) is overgeneralizing.

I started out by making what I thought (in my innocence) were a couple of incredibly uncontroversial points – that aesthetic tastes vary and that it is possible to find beauty in man-made things, that it is possible to see beauty in the artificial as well as in the natural. I expressed, quite honestly, my own personal preferences. I made it very clear that I was not making any sort of value on judgment on people whose aesthetic tastes differ from mine.

I guess I was making a plea for tolerance of differing views on aesthetics. I didn’t realise that aesthetics was a burning moral and political issue.

To me, preferring a painting or a building to a natural landscape is like preferring a painting of a beautiful woman to the real thing.

It’s called have differing aesthetic tastes. It’s not something to be threatened by. Apparently I’ve committed a crime against Aesthetic Correctness. I didn’t realise that not liking natural landscapes made me a bad person.

I’d also like to stress that I’m not an apologist for Modernism. I think 90% of Modernist architecture and 98% of Modernist painting is ghastly. I love 19th century academic art, 19th century neoclassicist art and 19th century Symbolist art. I like the Gothic Revival style. Oddly enough I’m not the biggest fan of neoclassicist architecture but I love neoclassicist painting. I dislike the Impressionists. I’m suspicious of the Romantics, although I’m a huge fan of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. On the whole my artistic tastes are very old-fashioned.

There is however some Modernist architecture that I really really like. And personally I do prefer cityscapes to natural landscapes.

To my puritanical mind, the idea seems depraved.

I find it very difficult to see aesthetics as a moral question. Do you think it’s a moral question?

In the Western world, many people take up hiking as a way to leave their natural cityscapes behind and be able to commune more intimately with mother nature. People with time and money on their hands schedule vacations to more exotic locales with the purpose to climb a mountain or to even watch birds that they wouldn’t normally be able to see in their own neck of the woods. While visiting the pristine Osa peninsula in Costa Rica, I was able to take a boat trip into the sea where after about an hour, I found myself in the midst of a huge congregation of dolphins surrounding our boat (500-600 dolphins). Some passengers jumped into the water and had intimate contact with these beautiful animals. Another time, I witnessed the raw and humbling experience of mother nature when upon waking up from a nap, our cabin was soon besieged by thousand of “army ants” out on a patrol. They left after about an hour, and luckily they didn’t return from what I’ve been told could be millions of such ants out for a more complete and engaging outing.

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1365732863455293442

WE DINDU NUFFIN

Many wolves and even bears seem to be quite friendly with people.

According to statistics, the absolute majority of wild predators run away at the sight of a person, a small percentage behaves friendly, another small percentage-aggressively. In the video, tourists feed a wild wolf with lard

Forests are ugly

Cathedrals of light.

In addition to raccoons and coyotes – the latter likely in the category of coywolves.

It doesn’t necessarily need to have religious motivations, vaccine skepticism is high amongst Soviet-style people too. (Decades of pushing atheism created a population highly susceptible to conspiracy theories and mystical thinking of all sorts as seen in the 1990s).

Not necessarily mythical to second guess the long term effects of these Covid-19 vaccines. “Science” changes, as evidenced by how antibiotics were once casually given for the common cold.

What is remarkable is that Central Park had not been sold off yet to earn money for the City, and right now it is just a park, considering that the land under it must be worth hundreds of billions for the City.

I don’t have much time to write, but…

You certainly aren’t a bad person for disliking nature and I’m not going to abuse you 🙂 , but aesthetics seems to me to go deeper than mere accident.

When we say something is beautiful we mean “this is good for me” and when we say it’s ugly we mean “this is bad for me”. Or so it seems to me at least. We are making a judgement on the subconscious level.

So in some sense you are really saying that natural environments are bad for you – which is interesting because this has been a major distinguishing strand in Western thought, the War Against Nature, of seeing nature as Other and as mankind outside and above it, cut off and alienated from it.

(and I am saying I feel at home in natural environments and feel myself a part of the whole, connected to it nourished by it on a profound level as the source of my being)

In my opinion, this war against nature has led to the concept of subduing and dominating it, to science, the devastation of natural environments, and then to the war against human nature which culminated in things like Puritanism, Calvinism, the anti-fun movement, and all the various neuroses, anxieties, and the general sense of being repressed and unhappy in modern times.

People who fear nature fear nature in themselves – and tend to see themselves as outside and above nature, and become alienated and alone in a dead, sterile world; the condition of modern man. They cut themselves off from the Whole.

Again not a moral condemnation and I would defend your right to never see nature again jn your life 🙂

As for Romanticism, it was hardly the first apprecation of nature. The Far East was in love with nature from the begining, and the Pagans thought every river had its nymph and forest it’s fauna. The Pagans loved nature.

The Christian Dark Ages in part turned against nature because it was Pagan, and Christianity is famous for having introduced the division between man and nature. Nature was evil to them. However I believe this is a bad misinterpretation of true Christianity and more a political reaction against Paganism.

St Francis of Assisi was a great lover of nature, and all those hermits in the deserts and forests, and all those monasteries in especially beautiful natural landscapes… 🙂 Seems to me the heart went where the mouth said it shouldn’t.

Already in the Renaissance Petrarch was writing of his sheer delight in wandering the local woods.

Romantic love of nature arose precisely when the mechanistic and anti Nature strand in Western culture reached a crescendo, as a counterpoint.

I think the alienation and malaise of modernity will only heal when Western man reconciles with Nature and once again sees himself as part of the While, and not as outside and above it, or cut off from it, and likewise reconciles with his inner nature.

After all, urbanism is like 8,000 years old or something – a mere blip in the hundreds of thousands of years man spent in nature experiencing himself as part of the whole.

But in the meantime I would fully support the establishment of communities of people like you who wish to live only in a man made environment 🙂

And now I must continue my journey into the beauties of nature…

Exactly. Light, energy, information. An old forest that has not been extensively logged for generations is a wonderful place. The mature ecosystems have everything in its due place it is highly organized and optimized, while still allowing for the maximal possible biodiversity.

https://images.app.goo.gl/RQvCnQFxLNbcx6RS6

Save constant repair, modern human cities won’t last for a hundred years. A forest would last millenia if left to itself.

Polar bears much more dangerous – sure.

Especially with the SJW crowd attacking them based on race…. Imagine what they would do to an ORANGE bear…

PEACE 😇

Only high status people live near the park – they would protect it, to protect their status. Not to mention, there is a reservoir there, and it would be a bad idea to get rid of it.

Does some webzine bear zero responsibility at all in terms of the quality of the articles and authors that it allows to be posted on its pages

Are you talking about the Unz Review or something else?

Is the beauty of a cathedral even comparable to the beauty of a forest or a mountain? I find it strange to exclude whole categories of beauty, I’d find it a tragedy to lose either.

I also like little things like the yellow and brown leaves on the ground at a playground, which is a little piece of nature with lots of concrete around it.

I wonder, how do viruses spread, if lockdowns don’t work?

The study seems quite dubious to me, comparing very low population density Sweden with a generally very disciplined population (who keep a distance from each other, pandemic or not) to high population density countries like Italy or the Netherlands. South Korea is mentioned in both, so it’s unclear whether it was considered a country with or without a lockdown. But clearly South Korea did lots of things not done in the West, they did restrict individual freedom in substantial ways, so I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be an example of a hands off approach.

Parks like that can have all sorts of structures built on it. A suburban park comes to mind. Over the past 25 years, it has seen the construction of a swim complex, ice skating rink and miniature golf course.

I have two hobbies: reading obscure books and walking in the woods.

Do you really walk in the woods though? I like to tell myself the same thing, but the reality is I’m just walking through parkland. My favorite trail is heavily wooded and runs by a river on one side and a golf course on the other. There are sports grounds close by (football, netball, cricket), and if I go walking at dusk I can hear referee whistles in the distance and I can see the headlights of cars as parents arrive to pick up the kids from training, so even if I’m walking along a portion of the trail where it’s where to encounter other people, there are plenty of other reminders that human activity is taking place very nearby. That’s quite different to what a walk in the woods meant for most of human history.

Bears can be domesticated. There is a monastery in Bosnia where the monks keep pet bears in honor of some hundreds-years-dead saint who they say hung out with friendly bears.

Mothers with cubs and grizzlies should be avoided. Male black bears are harmless unless you are stupid. I will never be in a situation where I will see a polar bear and you shouldn’t be either unless you are on a job with really great pay.

Wolves, mountain lions whatnot are more afraid of humans than most humans are of them. When Daniel Boone settled Kentucky he wasn’t afraid of any bears. He was afraid of Indians.

During a long mountain hike (70 km) I once met on a trail an old trekker who was walking alone for some 250 km already. He was 66 years old. He told me that the previous year he walked 1200 km on different trails. I believe him. During this hike we met a few elks and saw traces of lynx and bear. I also know that there are wolves in that area. The old man was all alone and he did not seem afraid of anything.

I walked trails with my children: my six old son walked 16km in a day, my 11 years son walked 24 km of difficult mountain terrain in 2 days, when he was 14 we walked 32 km of forested highland in two days. He often says that these were very good experiences that he truly liked.

He was afraid of Indians

And I am pretty sure that these Indians were not afraid of bears and wolves either.

Is the beauty of a cathedral even comparable to the beauty of a forest or a mountain?

I think so, yes. I think it’s weird to argue that natural beauty must somehow be superior to artificially created beauty.

I think the Cult of Nature is to some extent a symptom of the increasing self-hatred of western civilisation. It seems to me to be a desire to disparage the human ability to create beauty. And a desire to disparage the achievements of civilisation. The striving to create beauty and order is what makes a civilisation.

Civilisation is a precious thing. But it’s something that we in the West increasingly despise. We’ve lost confidence in civilisation, which is tragic.

Civilisation is a precious thing. But it’s something that we in the West increasingly despise. We’ve lost confidence in civilisation, which is tragic.

This is correct.

1. At least 1 of VVP’s daughters has had SputnikV doses at early stage

2. He may just have natural immunity to it and not want to appear a showoff by not requiring SputnikV , or have had the disease already (many at the top level of government and in Presidential administration have) and want to wait the recommended time before receiving vaccine….plus there are about a million security reasons why he may not want to publicise that.

3. VVP could easily just lie about having the vaccine anyway – particularly after the freakshow of Poroshenko and Zelensky getting drug tested for TV before a “debate”, Russian public not desperate for gratification to see if VVP vaccinated or not

Bears can be domesticated.

Technically, you mean “tamed.” Domestication involves selective breeding and genetic changes leading to certain common traits. Though arguably, being able to be tamed suggests the possibility of being able to be domesticated.

Wolves, mountain lions whatnot are more afraid of humans than most humans are of them.

Partly, depends on height and mass. Many aren’t afraid of kids – and young children working the fields is one reason for higher attacks in the Middle Ages. Many children are still attacked by wolves in India. When mountain lions attack, it is commonly women joggers under 5 feet tall. They would not attack a “jogger” like Ahmaud Arbery.

I don’t think that we need to choose; they are beautiful in different ways. It’s also clear that without nature there could be no mankind and thus no art whatsoever, so it seems silly to choose art over nature, but I digress.

Women can’t have sex with each other

It depends on a Clintonesque definition of sex. They certainly can be naked while causing sexual pleasure to each other, whether with the help of their tongues, fingers, or certain tools, is immaterial. What matters is that it can to a very large extent be a substitute for actual intercourse with a man, and some women engage in it regularly.

If you are not loud enough, you can get surprisingly close to bears. It does occasionally happen to tourists that they get in between a female bear and her cubs. Which could easily result in a ferocious attack by the bear.

He may just have natural immunity…

Even with 100% immunity, he had to (for the sake of his own political image) be publicly vaccinated in August-September

The Animals, particularly predators, don’t seem to have evolved at all in dealing with bait tactics from humans. Humans directly carrying bait are as likely to be attacked now, or to attract the animal for kill…. as they were several centuries before.

Sheep and cows have been killed billions of times by humans but shown zero evolvement including when defending their young. Have herds of Indian cows evolved into not protecting their young from humans because the cow is sacred there and very safe? Don’t know.

Africans must have killed millions of crocodiles to practically use their skin or for black magic sh*t, but when we went to Crocodile place in South Africa we basically gave the crocodile a full massage! It was middle of the day, so very hot and so you can do to the the crocodile what you want in that temperature, which of course as Russians we can’t resist! Fence was very thin, malleable wire fence that was very easy to put hands and arms through and stroke and lightly poke 2 crocodiles (obviously not the head, but the body) . Fencing spherical in places because the Croc was resting there, and in another place because a Croc must have previously stayed there.
A beautiful creature to touch, wonderful skin.No supervision and very safe!

I think wolf DNA may have been changed some by interactions with Neanderthals and then people. Though, not much of a genetic “domestication” difference between modern and medieval wolfs. (In fact, modern ones might be more wild, as they were repopulated from wilder places?) Maybe, half of historical attacks were rabid wolves – behavioral patterns encoded in DNA being overridden by viral RNA. I wonder what percentage were due to wolf-dog hybrids that might have had some kind of mental imbalance due to genetic mismatch – or rather people expecting them to have dog behaviors.

What has changed from the Middle Ages is many environmental characteristics. More sources of food for humans today (people used to sometimes raid eagles’ nests for food!), more natural prey for wolves today. Less contact between the two today, as forests are often bigger now, and there are less people on farms. Maybe, more lone wolf behavior in past (stressed circumstances in past.)

I feel like there is such a thing as a bull-dyke. That is, one has certain physical and behavioral characteristics, and therefore, there is such a thing, as a lesbian.

Though, perhaps, Sailer is right with his theory that when men were tougher, they could put bull-dykes in their place and so bull-dykes got amorous with them. It is interesting to consider the historical examples of women in hetero relationships enlisting with their male lovers in pirate crews or armies, and not being found out – it suggests to me that they were not very feminine-looking, and possibly what we would consider butches today.

I theorize that the number of true female lesbians is lower than male gays due to them having two X chromosomes.

Does Anyone know what Ethnicity Nemets @Peter_Nimitz is?
Are his ancestors from the Russian Empire or former citizens of the USSR?

He comments here on occasion, perhaps he could answer.

It doesn’t matter if a bear is black or white so long as it catches mice.

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Suspect it’s probably just a personal habit he seems to have where he’s extremely private with all things to do with his health; machismo, presidential image, personal preference, who knows. He’s probably had a few minor operations that nobody but a small clique knew about.

Russia seems to have avoided the kind of hysteria which has paralysed Europe, so, as long as the vaccines are readily available and everybody who wants one can have one I don’t see the need to get upset over a few refuseniks though I’m not going to die on a hill to defend them if the hysteria gets refocused on them instead of…..people sitting in parks drinking coffee (or whatever it is this week).

Fwiw I’ll take the vaccine at the first opportunity, and my stock argument in dealing with antivaxers is that they ought to go pet a dog… that’s got rabies then we can continue the argument six months later. Advocates of zero-covid and forever lockdowns have a certain implicit antivaxx sentiment which you need to acknowledge: “Take the vaccine by all means, but lockdowns and social distancing need to continue for months anyway” is essentially saying that they don’t work and it’s as as antivaxx as some fool saying it’ll alter your dna or let Bill Gates chip you or whatever. The difference is that the former have significantly more influence on policy.

Er,Mr Hack/ Elephant man….the proof? Where is evidence Ostroushko’s father was a hero at Sralingrad and not a POS UPA swine?

Proof may be too difficult to ask but reliable anecdote of who, what and where you heard this….. and where exactly Ostroushko originate from.

Remember Mr Hack…..NO Austrian intelligence disinfo BS, and no Romanian gypsy folktales ( your breed of Khokholism)

Don’t project the mir/svet fantasist retard AP when talking about “consummate BS artist”, I was mainly referring to my piano playing, which includes successfully playing the Chopin Waterfall Etude in recent days. I listened on YouTube to the obscene faggot Lang Lang play the Ossia cadenza in Rakhmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto….. I’ve never been so insulted ever-his behaviour an absolute disgrace! It provoked me into trying to play that part of the Concerto, but did not get anywhere!

She sounds like Rachel Karen Greene (Jennifer Aniston) in The One with Rachel’s Big Kiss who claims she had a lesbian fling in college because she snogged the Sorority social secretary (Winona Ryder) at a party.

I wonder if Southern and Northern English people are the same ethnic group. Southern and Northerners have very different accents/dialects and local cultural traits, and many Northerners tend to see themselves as “oppressed” by the Southerners and see Southerners as a distinct group at odds with themselves.

The South, especially London and the South East, contains some of the wealthiest regions of Europe, whereas the North contains some of the poorest of Europe, although there are notable exceptions to this rule.

I struggle to think of another country in Europe that exhibits such large regional variations in its native people as England does.

My working theory is that the genetics of the South, especially South East, are heavily derived from the Anglo-Saxon and Norman elites, and perhaps even Jewish to some extent especially amongst the upper classes. In contrast, the genetics of the North is largely derived from assimilated Celts who have a historical memory of seeing the Anglo-Saxon and later Norman “Southerners” as the oppressors.

Michigan woman charged with caring for wildlife without permit, animals killed by state officials

I wonder if it would be fair to say that Muslims elected Biden? If so, his involvement in Syria is on them.

Interestingly Orbán just got vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine publicly. He imported that vaccine in spite of a lack of approval from the EU, amid general mistrust by the population. (My mother just rejected it because she didn’t trust the Chinese vaccine.)

Rich people always liked to hunt in the forest. It was perfectly safe (there were accidents, but not much more dangerous than driving sports cars in the 1930s), but not a solitary activity. Nature was dangerous for a person walking alone.