A visit to a s3x-robot factory, and the furniture of Catherine the Great. Latter definitely NSFW.
Category Archives: Philosophy
America The Weird
Victor Davis Hanson on the appeal of the West:
America remains the exceptional Western nation, whose influence and stature transcend the size of its economy and population, and its vast land mass of rich natural resources. Its cocktail of property rights, unfettered oil and gas development, muscular national defense, gun rights, religiosity, free-market economics, limited government, philanthropy, and great private universities is, again, unlike anything in the West.
Likewise, its excesses that arise from the marriage of free-market affluence and constitutionally protected unfettered expression, in the eyes of the world, appear often as license and indulgence. Certainly, the First and Second Amendments, the National Football League, rap music, the U.S. Marine Corps, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Ivy League, or 24/7 cable news could not originate elsewhere.
The result is that America exists both as the world’s refuge and its beacon, the sole place where individuals can find a safe harbor. Only in America can the individual remain free and able to live his life under the assumption that the major decisions of his life are his own and not predicated on state approval. Only in the United States does the rags to riches story still exist, given that neither regulation, the deep state, nor an entrenched aristocracy can fully suppress entrepreneurs or aspiring capitalists.
A key goal of my Outer Space Treaty project is to extend this to the solar system. Speaking of which, Michael Listner has an analysis of the latest U.S. legislation along these lines.
Rejuvenation
This seems like a very promising approach. First dogs, then use the revenue to do clinical trials on humans. I’m holding up pretty well for my age, but I’d really like to set the clock back.
[Update a few minutes later, after reading]
I’d note that one of the “diseases of aging” listed is diabetes. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that this is mostly a problem of poor diet, based on decades of criminally terrible nutrition recommendations, and can largely be reversed by simply going keto. In fact, they’ve found that it can even be an effective treatment for Type 1 (and it was, prior to the development of insulin).
[Thursday-morning update]
New at Analog: Can we reverse aging?
[Via Gary Hudson]
[Bumped]
Suicide Of The West
.Marx
He didn’t replace old ideas about commerce and money; he intensified them.
I assume that this is an excerpt or adaptation from Jonah’s new book.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related. From the brilliant Sarah Hoyt, who understands the Left as well as anyone: The Russians don’t understand America enough to successfully hack our election.
Acculturating
It’s hard. Very hard.
If you don’t read Sarah Hoyt every day, you should.
Groundhog Day
The movie, at once funny and profound, has become a classic at a quarter of a century.
The Scourge Of Multi-Culturalism
Thoughts from David Solway, and slightly less-recent ones on post-modern “progressivism” from Sarah Hoyt.
Virtual Assistants
Why you’ll fire Siri and do the job yourself:
I spoke to ObEN co-founder and CEO Nikhil Jain this week. He told me ObEN’s technology generates a 3D, computer-generated representation of the user’s face with a single selfie.
ObEN also learns to copy your voice. Once it’s got your voice down, it can do things with your voice that you cannot — speak Chinese, for example, or sing.
That “personality” is based not only on how you speak, but on what you know as well. It’s even possible to add knowledge manually.
Hard to imagine anything going wrong with that.
Tax Cuts As “Theft”
This characterization (and inability to distinguish between giving someone money and allowing them to keep what they earned) shows that Democrats do not believe in private property. Leftists never do. Unless it’s their own, of course.