classicsnoot

Honest question: what are the parameters for a 'white genocide?' To clarify, what would have to occur for you to believe that title is appropriate?

Back in early 2016 I told myself that if BTC dropped below $200 I would buy one. The lowest I saw was $203. When it went meteor a few years later, I felt Fold remorse. Perhaps it is sour grapes, but every time I walk by the BTC machine at my corner store, I relish in seeing how low it has gone, though still well higher than $200. :/

More on topic, the only action the corner store BTC machine gets, apart from drug addicts, is scams. That I can attest to, twice some tech ignorant soul has walked in, dumped their savings, then asked the cashier for a receipt.

Unless crypto currency can be inoculated from speculation (impossible IMO) it will be some time, if ever, before it becomes a viable mechanism for general economic exchange.

It is absolutely famous, but its fame is somewhat cloistered. The Elephant's Foot is a gateway to the Chernobyl rabbit hole for so many people. A geological, cataclysm celebrity; a fucking rock with a documented kill count and it sits still. Fascinating.

This picture led me to reading all about Chernobyl, Pripyat, glasnost, and the collapse of the SSR in the context of logistics and energy infrastructure. The whole chibang was the result of good intentions, poor planning, and an intellectual environment experiencing a death spiral. During this process, I watched a documentary on the Chernobyl clean up effort. Chernobyl was the largest military deployment by Russia since their "Great Patriotic War."

I digress. This picture could be accurately portrayed as a perfect metaphor for the scientific endeavors of the 20th century; unique brilliance, unfettered intention, bureaucratically fettered investment, unintentional disaster, Herculean effort at recovery, and all of it flushed down the memory hole.

In terms of exoplanetary interchange, time recedes and tonnage expands as the concern. Without a space elevator or MAC transfer solution, you'd be effectively FedExing teacups of dirt to a green house in a Sahara contained on Antarctica... on Mars.

Definitely! First off, I am biased in my compost preferences and it is always good to hear different opinions. Second, what works for one fails for another, so no sense in throwing more effort into a process that isn't working.

On to your situation. In home composting is always tricky. My wife and I do indoor/outdoor because we have a yard. In your situation, I'd advise against vermicomposting for the same reasons you listed. I was the technical manager for an enterprise vermicompost startup. Our facility was a rowhouse basement and the owner of the property was a founder. Flies are unavoidable, as is the occasional vermischwitz. They are fragile guys and minor mistakes have major consequences. The exact ratios escape me, but 1lb of healthy, mature red wigglers can consume half a pound of Green (fresh) cellulose in a day or two. We were engineering soil additive, so we supplemented heavily with Gray (dead) cellulose (cardboard, paper, etc.) In an attempt to hit profitable output. I will spare you the further details of our failure. Suffice to say that vermiculture is tricky in the best circumstances.

My suggestion to you is twofold: use the Bokashi Method (https://www.planetnatural.com/composting-101/indoor-composti...) and find a friend with a garden to offload your Bokashi Tea. That link is one of the first hits on Google (read: not vetted) because if you go this route you are going to be reading a lot and there are many roads to Rome.

This is very short due to medium, but if you'd like to discuss in depth and at length I'd be more than happy to. Both composting and waste neutralization are passions of mine. Just let me know how to contact you should you desire.

You are correct. Incidentally, humus is a delightful compliment to a sound horticultural spread, not unlike it's etymological cousin. It can make things better, but it cannot be the main course.

Autocorrect has outed me as a desirer of dips and spreads more so than an urban farmer. The shame and ignominy is overwhelming.

Your recollection is correct. Consider too the dust accumulation predictions for the moon landing. It would appear that we (as humans) are not very good at dust estimates (dustimates?). This is reinforced by the continuing struggle/inability to manufacture dirt. As an avid composter with a ton (lol sorry) of experience, I can make you hummus for days. I can turn 90% of your organic household waste into growth medium, bokashi tea, or pre-dirt in anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. But if you want me to make dirt? I'll need a decade to get you a production level process that requires raw stocks, pre-processing, vermiculture, aquaculture, and many rounds of late stage funding. Dirt production stymies every modern industrial process because as it stands, you cannot reduce the time necessary for conversion from hummus to dirt. I find it beautifully tragic that terraforming Mars will require mass dirt transfer from earth (consider this tonnage conundrum and revel in the irony).

Don't take my word for it. Go out and try to make earth yourself. If you can reinvent this fundamental, elementary process, you will join Jonas Salk and Fritz Haber, and very few others, in changing The Game in a fundamental way.

I posted this article here. No one voted it up, so I assume no one read it or had much interest. I personally believe many of these Green Schemes will have terrible consequences, but time will tell.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cl...

Apply this logic (ill gotten gains is the term you used, but I interpret it as a coded way to say value created by immoral actors) to technology and it suddenly becomes a little more complicated.

The scary prospect, from my perspective, is that cultural erasure on moral grounds is not only possible, it could be inevitable and lead to a chain reaction. From the statue removal in the US (easily justifiable considering the circumstances of their placement) to the college course alteration and removal in certain South African universities (justifiable under Socially Just interpretations) to the discrediting and forced reinterpretation of scientific theory (IQ studies, intelligent design inclusion, inherent sex disparity, evolutionary genetics), it would appear there may in fact be a reduced friction gradient that isn't wholly fallacious. If some pernicious pedophile develops a cure for cancer, I'm not going to consider for even a second whether or not I am going to use it.

It is a strange axiom but I have yet to see it otherwise: when the will of the people is Leftward, it is Democracy; when the will of the people is Rightward, it is Populism.

The person that responded to you employed a classic "anti-rightward" trope equating populism to vicarious elite control. I fail to see the difference between Populism and Democracy on the "people" side of the equation, rather the difference is in which elites are pulling the strings.

An interesting question. Pre- Post- Modern thought (lol English language) was rife with intellectual alchemy, but the concept of divergent schools of thought on the same issue was accepted. Consider the extremely heterogeneous composition of the Abolitionist movement, as well as the members of the various Oriental Schools. Radically different assertions could be grouped into the same class, regardless of fundamental disagreements.

From the article:

"The difference is that this approach [Slate's in Current Year] is now tempered by other, graver duties—the need, for instance, to avoid equivocation on matters of morality, fundamental policy, and human rights."

I find this puzzling, due to the realtive nature of morality. Morals are plastic and variable based on popular persuasion and general consensus. If "morals" are a pillar of intellectual identity, isn't this just a subtle way to say Slate will just go with the majority regardless of objective facts and subjective opinions of merit?

Tittered the European, dripping with blood from every corner of the map.

I wonder if your generosity in interpretation extends to modern cultures and their borders.

You conflating political rhetoric with government policies is predictable but no less disappointing. Throughout this thread you have moved the goal posts, begged the question, and strawman'd in circles, all to signal to presumably someone just how virtuous you are. Pathetic, really, but again expected.

It never ceases to amaze me how this chapter from his book attracts and repels IYIs so consistently.

It is a general courtesy to indicate when you have retroactively edited your post.

More to the point, you were responding to a comment that had already introduced the caveat "outside of right wing circles," thereby rendering your observation a bit redundant.

I feel as if you are making an apples to oranges comparison (but I don't perceive any ill will so I am responding in good faith and with no intention to politick) in terms of gender pay gap and decreasing male inclusion in higher education.

I am glad you used the more accurate numbers of 7-10% in terms of male/female pay. From my perspective, the innate differences between the sexes explains this gap quite well: men are motivated from a very young age, in addition to their general biological proclivity towards competition, to seek approval through public acts to gain status; women are motivated from a very young age, in addition to their general biological proclivity towards hording value, to seek influence through private acts to gain status. There are plenty of specific examples that run contrary to my assertion, but in general, men seem adapted to the corporate system which would lead one to expect them to dominate therein. Regardless of classical dominance hierarchy, there is massive combined interest actively working to inject as many females as possible into high paying, white collar jobs.

In terms of higher education, the decrease in male participation is a significant problem because male participation in higher education was tenuous at best even before female inclusion began. Though higher education was indeed a "boys club," it was a very small club. Just because it was "all" male does not extend it into being "all male." The moment the gates opened for females, they took over the majority in public universities within a decade. They continue to dominate in education to this day. Metaphor is a dangerous game, but I think one should worry more about bad students getting worse than good students getting more attention.

In my opinion you make a very salient point about the difference in the reaction of people to the two problems. I see them as similar because both endeavours (more females in corporate && more males in education) are fighting both a biological tendency as well as cultural norms, no simple task in a world of consensus, and I don't have to elaborate and how very far away from that we are.

It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. Why you end up where you do is either confusing or predictable based on how you start, particularly in the world of unverified assertion.

I didn't mean to offend. I'm a historian so I tend to think in blocks of time. I often miss the moment. It is a failing. I should have thought before I posted.

That seems very short sighted in evolutionary terms. Guns, Germs, and Steel has served to give me a bit of trepidation about avoiding sickness for convenience sake.

I am not an Anti-vax person, but I am leery of the Flu Vaccine. Could you help me understand why it is better to be immunized against last year's flu instead of surviving this year's flu? If this isn't the place and/or you aren't the person, I'd appreciate a gentle nudge in the right direction. Thanks!

You can't do "positive" or "negative" things the The Earth. It is a lump of mass shot through with potential energy and lattice opportunities. Net positives and negatives are subjective assessments by perspectives constrained within a framework. The earth is the super constraint on humanity, at least for the time being. The oxygen rich atmosphere is not objectively better than the nitrogen rich atmosphere, but it is subjectively worse for us.

It's a fools game anyway. Erase the homo sapiens and some other primate gets spared a genocide. I have never understood the value in anthropomorphizing the planet outside of political manipulation.

Economic structures, on the other hand... ;)

The operation to blow up the heavy water plant, as well as a lot of Roennberg's other work, is covered in The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943 by James Holland.

I am not invoking Godwin, but I happen to be reading a very interesting book on WWII that focuses largely on the industrial/logistical effort of the main actors. The coverage of Germany's industrial sectors, particularly the aeronautics companies like Messerschmitt, Junkers, etc. is a pretty good example. Looking deeper (read: other sources) shows a world where the political lean of the Order of the Day had massive influence on what products got made, which ideas were given attention and funding, and which people were either supported or blackballed. In 1930s Germany, the engineers and firms that maintained the proper signalling, or political tone, were given a wide berth in deciding what was relevant and irrelevant with little or no consideration for what worked and what did not. This is what sprang to mind when I read your comment.

"If [an entity] somehow manages to get blacklisted from [every major player in a given industry], odds are pretty good that's society working as intended."

I can see the logic behind your statement, but I think it is easier than you are asserting for zeitgeist to start a ball rolling that cannot be easily stopped in terms of pushing people/actors/organizations out of society for being on the "wrong side."

On the nose, in a manner of speaking.

Fascinating. Simply fascinating.

I have so many questions for you. Have you been studying Walmart long or is it just a passing fancy? How does a company just squeeze out ~$15 billion dollars from a revenue machine in motion (was there some long term plan that came to fruition? Did the pull some Office Space kind of caper and "find" it in their books?)? I have had this picture in my head of Walmart being very similar to fungi (mushrooms specifically): all people see is the storefront, the spiteful and mean-spirited "people of Walmart" caricatures, and the evil business destroying monster (these would be the toadstools); hidden beneath the surface is a massive network of nodes, pathways, connections, and raw infrastructure constantly shifting mass and energy at every moment in every type of climate and condition. I read somewhere that they lose ~$4 million a month in theft and damage. I thought that was a lot... $500 billion... that was one of the stimulus packages that saved the banks...

Fascinating. Your comment was a delight and I am off to dig up more on the company that will hopefully carry humanity to the asteroid belt.

Is this project affiliated with Signal outside of using their protocol? I have been a faithful TextSecure user for years, but the service has been falling down of late, particularly Signal calls and group texts with non-Signal users, so I am leery of getting involved with another Signal team project...