bbctol

10 ms·

61.
by bbctol 9y ago
The apotheosis of this would be Michael Craig-Martin's An Oak Tree ,[1] which some consider nonsense and I think is superb. All's fair in art and so on! That said, in the case of Bourgeois I find a lot of her work powerful withou
62.
by bbctol 9y ago
"Nurse, bring the crash cart!" "Hang on, this guy's got a... some kind of weird tattoo?" "No time to worry about that, he's flatlining! Now start compressions, and break a few ribs if you have to!"
63.
by bbctol 9y ago
It's odd; I'm usually a big proponent of terror management theory, but I think this take applies it so clumsily it's made me more skeptical.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Left here, not unfathomable or particularly surprising. You don't need to go back to Clinton to find a Democratic president who expanded border security and cracked down harshly on illegal immigration; Obama did the same thing, despite
65.
by bbctol 9y ago
...the king said, just before the blade fell.
66.
by bbctol 9y ago
That's not a great summary of libertarian beliefs, and the exact opposite of Thiel's stated beliefs.
67.
by bbctol 9y ago
I mean I hate him because I read Zero to One and noticed his thoughts on monopoly are insane, but sure, you can assume people aren't doing independent thinking and research while in turn not doing independent thinking and research.
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by bbctol 9y ago
It's not literal, but it is basically a molasses cake baked into a pie topped with sugar, so yeah. Sweet.
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by bbctol 9y ago
What? The government sets budgets for the long term all the time, even leaving aside the fact that it's pretty able to predict its tax income for the next year.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Black Sails might be the closest to what you're looking for. While it's a Starz show, with the requisite amount of violence, sex, and general wackiness, it actually ended up a pretty complex political drama.
71.
by bbctol 9y ago
No one cares about Richard Spencer other than media figures who needed a dude in a suit to claim to be the leader of the alt-right. He's a random non-entity that was virtually unknown even in cryptofascist circles until liberals decide
72.
by bbctol 9y ago
...not suggesting this, but since you seem dissatisfied with the other options: direct action? If you're really concerned about uh, serving on the front of the liberation of earth.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Serious question: what far-left subreddits? Not trying for snark, I really don't know what the left equivalent of like... /r/DylannRoofInnocent would be on reddit.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Deepmind does a ton of work in meat neuroscience, and are actually publishing useful research in the field (a recent if somewhat controversial review at http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30509-3 )
75.
by bbctol 9y ago
Yes and no. Neural nets are somewhat inspired by neurons, but it's a pretty loose relation, and the more NNs improve, the less similar to the brain they look. Individual neurons are much more complex than the nodes of a neural network,
76.
by bbctol 9y ago
That link gives some context to the tension between postmodernism and relativism. A claim that postmodernism is based on the idea that "truth is relative" is a pretty severe overreach; even the most radical of influential postmode
77.
by bbctol 9y ago
It's because this is a moral panic from people who think they're immune to moral panics.
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by bbctol 9y ago
It's interesting how a modern system that lines up with evolutionary theories can either be framed as "the natural, healthy way we were meant to to do x" (if you're pushing a paleo diet) or "the pre-civilized, cavem
79.
by bbctol 9y ago
I just... appreciate art, I guess? It's a beautiful book. The experience of reading it is unpleasant, but that's separate from aesthetic appreciation--I don't read books just to be taught lessons.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Yes! I might spend the rest of the day plugging The Unconsoled, which I think is one of those masterpieces that's doomed to forever be underrated because experiencing it is so unpleasant. It captures exactly what it feels like to hav
81.
by bbctol 9y ago
A lot of Ishiguro's works do this; I think The Unconsoled is a fantastic book, but it's so truly painful to read I understand why most people hate it. The Swedish Academy said he "in novels of great emotional force, has uncov
82.
by bbctol 9y ago
Fire self-replicates. It maintains its existence by consuming fuel and spreading itself. It's not as skilled at this as a human, but neither's a worm. What about an individual bacterium? Does it have a goal? Are they conscious in
83.
by bbctol 9y ago
Oh yeah, I mean I'm definitely plowing through the tail end of a manic phase here, and HN isn't the appropriate place. C'est la vie.
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by bbctol 9y ago
My goal is to make sure no one cares about what I (or another) has to say.
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by bbctol 9y ago
Yeah, that's the draft of the second thing, which is fun to read as repeated edits get more and more deranged while I slowly realize that each edit is making the case against publishing it in the first place. There's a link at the
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by bbctol 9y ago
Well, on the one hand, thanks, on the other, that sensation of your emotions and thoughts crystallizing into clarity is usually a sign of an oversimplified worldview, sometimes being supplied by someone trying to manipulate you.
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by bbctol 9y ago
So... I've got a weird and evolving philosophy about those sorts of arguments in general, which is what led to me taking most versions down, and why I'm not really comfortable with spreading them any more either. (And why I feel b
88.
by bbctol 9y ago
Jesus, I just realize there's a whole generation of people on the internet who think the fact that no one will argue with them means they're right. Like, are you really going to go your whole life thinking that your worldviews are
89.
by bbctol 9y ago
Nah, Bannon's just a mixture of economic leftist and authoritarian nationalist that got pretty popular at the beginning of the last century, too. (It, uh, fell out of favor.) He wants to regulate tech companies because it would be good
90.
by bbctol 9y ago
I thought this tweet was interesting: https://twitter.com/libbycwatson/status/857943302599053314 It sure looks like a political campaign, but maybe the more connected things get, the more political everything beco

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