This midweek posting reiterates some history (and hysteria) -related points that I've put on soc.media, hoping some folks will pay attention to off-angle perspectives that are (I assert) more accurate and useful than most standard ones you're seeing.
More important are the Newer Deal Propopsals that I'll reiterate below. For example, how to smash the mad right's current, hypocritical fad-riff about Voter ID. And ways to ensure this madness never happens again.
But first...
== The Standard Pattern of Mafiosi ==
As usual, no one heeds underlying patterns. Like what's happening with Trump's bluster threats vs. Iran. Leveraging cynically off the recent courage and sacrifice of the Iranian people.
Superficially, there will be enough of a "nuclear deal" for Trump to crow about, though it will be functionally no better than what Obama got out of the mullahs. And that will just be surface stuff. For show n' brags.
* A pattern also followed by George Bush Sr. when he left Saddam in charge of Iraq, to murder a million southern Shiites, rather than just liberate everyone, as Gen. Schwarzkopf begged. Same pattern. That of mafiosi.
== Europe stand up! But offer help, not churlish ingratitude ==
This parade float is fair! Yes, it is tIme for Europe to rise up and defend vs Trumpists & Putinists! And yet, I resent those who are slagging “The U.S.” in general.
Americans (including we in the increasingly involuntary satrapy of California) are struggling with our Confederate siblings, cousins and neighbors, who are having another of their generational, murderously psychotic episodes (now phase 8 of our 250 year civil war.)
Hence, we could use help from those we saved - one lifespan ago. Not broad-brush yammers from ingrates whose nations prospered under the American Pax that gave the world its best 80 years, compared to any other era... compared to ALL other eras. Compared to all other eras combined. (Disagree? Then tabulate and refute it.)
Want Europe to stand up more? Great! In fact, it’s about time.
Might you have to carry civilization forward, if True America fails and the Confederate-psychopath-Putinist traitors win this dangerous round?
Yes, you might, and God bless you. And Canada/Australia/NZ/Japan and the rest.
In that case, many of us (not me) will flee to you. Just as your best fled to us, in the 1930s & 40s etc.
(I won’t run. I will stay and I will die on this hill. Or until we reach Appomattox.)
Help us if you can. We have a right (that we earned) to ask for it.
But I will not abide churlishly-generalized and sanctimoniously masturbatory, reductionist America-bashing. Our mad side may kill our good side, in this round of our bipolar civil war. Especially if you self-righteously backstab us, instead of helping.
But this blue light is what gave the world hope.
And it will be remembered that way, by history, even if a red and gray psychotic wave drowns the flame.
== And in the U.S. we have our own backstabbing sanctimony junkies ==
Again and again, I see folks on our own (blue American) side of this civil war, jerking off to sanctimony rather than standing up, the way our ancestors did, in earlier phases of our recurring psychotic (confederate outbreak) civil war, and closing ranks.
"Pelosi, Schumer... all the Dem politicians are weaklings and Republicans-lite!"
== And finally, a lagniappe for Britain ==
Now that Brexit is a topic again... Heed these signs that were waved by the REMAIN crowds during Brexit.
Britain-IN? An inspiring rallying cry!
135 comments:
Re: Iran: Maybe the speculations surrounding Iranian hacking attacks are true and the Ayatollah holds some kompromat. Or they wait until the protests after the traditional 40 days of mourning are over and the protests start anew.
Re: Europe: I am more and more sure that the war with Russia will come, and that we will win it. The only question that remains is how many figures the final number of dead will have, how long it will last, and how much is going to be destroyed.
Some Nerd news: Inleap Photonics, a start up company once invested in industrial cutting lasers, has announced that their current prototype can down up to 300 Type 1 and 2 drones per minute.They use a highly focused laser (instead of the lower focused British and Rheinmetall system).
The AfD is currently occupied with infighting over nepotism charges, but I doubt that will stop people from voting for them. Another AfD state party has been flagged as extremist (to a total of 5, plus the federal party), but it will take some time to work its ways through the courts, as this decision by the State Office of the Protection of the Constitution can be appealed.
There are signals that the CDU will give up their blockade and join those parties voting for a ban of the AfD. Even if they agree to indict, the trial may take years.
Putin doesn't dare wage open war with Europe. A pack of cranky Finn cub scouts could march into St Petersburg and likely be greeted as liberators. But even if that exaggerates, Vlad doesn't dare shift many forces around. Most of his soldiers are kept in place by Chechen and Korean Stopping Troops. If they are packed in trains to the Estonian border, there will be a juicy Kremlin visible from the train windows.
Everyone is braying that the Ukrainian drone operators embarrassed NATO in those exercises. Nope. That is HOW a modern military modernizes.
Help us if you can.
The question I ponder is:
How is you helped best?
By keeping the system stable in hope the next electoral cycles will fix the chaos, or accelerating the chaos that enough of you rise to remove the Epstein Class from power?
I think the first not the second.
Sadly, there's very little practical that we can do directly to help our American cousins through the long dark teatime of their soul. Just like with Iran, direct help will just be held up by the regime as evidence of "Foreign Interference". They already claim to their thralls that the sea of people marching for liberty and justice in Minnesota is just Soros-paid professional agitators. Giving evidence to further that lie would be counterproductive.
Similarly, "accelerating the chaos" will, I think, just strengthen the forces of chaos, not the forces for restoring order to America.
And so, the best we can do (other than our hopes, prayers, and encouragement, of course), is to tend the lights in the House of Many Mansions, hoping that the light in the window will help our friends find their way through the darkness.
I know this song wasn't supposed to be about international relations ...
We will see. I hope you are right.
(There is a window of opportunity between now and 2028-29, when we are projected to reach defense parity. Three additional factors have an influence: The war in Ukraine itself, the US elections in 26 and 28, and the ongoing economic and financial collapse in Russia proper.)
Prince Andrew has been arrested for crimes on Epstein's island.
Prince Andrew knew everyone.
So how long before he unalives himself or has a heart attack in his prison cell?
What's the over and under on his remaining life expectancy?
In contrast to my previous post ... maybe that is something that someone outside the US could do to help.
Andrew was arrested not just for cavorting with Epstein, but also for leaking state secrets to someone who could be fairly categorized as an enemy of the Crown. Which could be construed as Treason.
And ... well, the Tower is still there. And the sword is still there. It would almost seem a shame not to use them. Heck, due to Britain's "Special Relationship" with the US, it would be perfectly reasonable to invite the President of the United States to witness the spectacle.
Would do a world of good...
As the video below makes clear, being a member of the Epstein class is like being on a luxury yacht where you can do anything you want with impunity.
But once you try to leave, your body will be found floating in the water.
And so this elite group uses blackmail to keep its own members in line. As this interview with former Mob boss Mike Franzese shows "If you want to control a billionaire, get him on tape with a 12 year old".
Franzese was actually serving time in Epstein's cell after the Feds brought him down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvynP_2LS2Y&t=1217s
Billionaire Insider Exposes Epstein’s Real Blackmail Operation
But why would otherwise rich and powerful men knowingly put themselves in a position where they are certain to have their vile acts recorded and used for blackmail?
Because for them, doing something supremely vile - after getting bored with all the wealth and power and influence - is the ultimate power flex.
They do it for the same reason that wannabee gang members do a crime in order to get into the gang. Once you are in, the connections and benefits far outweigh the inconvenience of being blackmailed for the occasional floor vote or judicial ruling.
P.S. I recommend Franzese (whose father was a don) pod casts for a fascinating look on how the Mob operates from the inside (he actually appears as a character in the movie "Goodfellows" in the tiki bar scene). He knows how blackmail works and how rich people literally get away with murder. I especially recommend his video on how he made millions scamming the sale of gasoline in New Jersey.
Franzese in Goodfellas
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FwncifvTDy8
And for the record, I love Mob movies.
The six best movies in history are:
Goodfellas
The Godfather I
The Godfather II
Casino
Once Upon a Time in America
Public Enemy (with a special place in my heart for Angels with Dirty Faces, Cagney's scene when he goes to to the electric chair acting like a coward to keep the street kids from idolizing him is amazing)
Not included is The Irishman due to lack of veracity
We shall not speak of Godfather III for it is an abomination.
It's important to know history in order to peer ahead at rhyming themes, especially as Project 2025 used 1930s Germany as a playbook.
Foolish people declare "Hitler was elected!" as a parallel with Trump. Well, yes, sort of. But only sort-of. After the 1932 election, Nazis were the largest minority party and President Hindenberg appointed AH chancellor, but in expectation to fire him, 1st chance. SO the Nazis poisoned Hindenberg. Then they set the Reichstag on fire and blamed their opponents, then arrested enough left wing Bundestag members so the Nazis BECAME a majority. And it began.
And it helps to know stuff. Then you may know what comes next. Which is why I keep foretelling Next Stages, so that at least some will be thinking ahead. Like how Venezuela, then soon Iran and then Cuba will all follow mafia rules.
Above all, since Trump fired or re-assigned many counter-intel and counter-terror agents as soon as he resumed office, And then fired all the independent Inspectors general and military JAGs. it is blatantly clear that Heritage and Project 2025 traitors are planning a fallback to prevent the 2026 elections. If their surface push to change election laws fails, all that they will have left - to save their asses from prison - will be continued waves of BLACKMAIL... and even that will shatter...
...so you get your pick: a 9/11 terrorism event, like the one that rallied the nation around Bush... or a Reichstag Fire.
Either way, we need to be ready to hit the streets shouting "REICHSTAG FIRE!" AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS. People will get it.
It's way early, and yet I expect Celt witll get post-of-the-day
I read kong charles response to his brother's arrest, stand firmly for the rule of law.
How ironic that nerdy Charles turns out to be the hero instead of his cooler brother Randy Andy.
"We shall not speak of Godfather III for it is an abomination."
You'll doubtless get pushback, but I totally agree. When III came out, I did a whole binge of the previous two films (on VHS tape at the time) just to make sure I would recognize any references and remember all of the characters. I was so pumped for that film, and then had to feel the smile on my face freeze as the scales metaphorically dropped from my face. And then we're supposed to be enthralled by Michael dropping dead as some kind of homage to the first film, even though it didn't follow logically from anything in the rest of the plot?
Plus, the absence of Robert Duvall was the (opposite of) icing on the cake.
"Venezuela, then soon Iran and then Cuba will all follow mafia rules."
All I know of the mafia I know from movies (see above). But it does seem to me that someone like Don Corleone gains power by being loyal as well as expecting loyalty. DJT is the opposite of that.
Dr. Brin,
Do you have any sources about Hindenburg being poisoned? I remember nothing about that from my prior readings, only that he died of metastatic cancer - which, if it had spread to his lungs by 1934, would seem to obviate pettier methods. It would seem a greater risk to be implicated in poisoning a war hero than just letting a dead man walking die in his own time. (Not that the Nazis didn't do far more stupid things and get away from them for a time.)
Pappenheimer
Re: Prince Andrew actuarial chart
The Andy Formerly known as Prince probably has a pretty good life expectancy still. In the reign of QEII, he might have been set out in the Scottish Highlands to be hunted by the Royal Corgis.
Pappenheimer
Gimme another coupla examples of good and bad robots or AIs for my book dedication?
AIlien Minds
Dedication
To those human maker/creators
whose art promised us friends
like Samantha, Data, and ___...
…or else gave warnings
like poor Hal, Ava and Daneel.
And to those – natural, embodied and virtual –
who are making dreams come true,
with fewer nightmares.
Joe, of course. (A logic named). Guy just wanted to help.
Pappenheimer
(Marvel's) The Vision?
And Ultron as a bad robot.
Bad
Colossus the forbin project
HAL - 2001
M5 - ST ToS
Nomad - ST ToS
Agent smith - the matrix
Skynet - Terminator
Lore - ST TNG
Cybermen - Dr Who
Good
The Golem - Jewish tradition
Robbie the robot - forbidden planet
Robot - lost in space (warning will robinson!)
Data - ST TNG
Bolos
Computer - Starlost
Complicated
Rebellious robots - RUR
Alien monolith - 2001
Roy batty (and Decker) - blade runner
Borg hive mind - ST TNG
@Celt
Keir Dullea appears in all three sections of your list. Nicely done.
Good
I Sing the Body Electric
Lathe of Heaven hotdog vendor
Complicated
THX1138 cops
Bad as in Useless:
A Bad Day For Sales
...and I still refuse to visit the science fiction museum unless it has officially been declared a Twonky Free Zone
Bad
The Virus/ Vampire Fleets - Traveller RPG
Shodan - System Shock
The Calculator - Fallout Tactics
Ash - Alien I
David - Prometheus
GLaDOS -Portal
HK 50 Series- Knights of the Old Republic
The RABID AI in Cyberpunk 2077
Good
Rei Toei -Idoru/Bridge Trilogy
The Machine - Person of Interest
The Emperor of the Shi - Fallout
Call - Alien VI
C3PO/R2D2 - Star Wars
Alt Cunningham, Brendan, Delamaine -Cyberpunk 2077
It's Complicated
Wintermute/Neuromancer -Sprawl Trilogy
Helios/Ikarus -Deus Ex 1
Victor & Yes-Man -Fallout New Vegas
HK-47 - Knights of the Old Republic
Eto Demerzel- Foundation TV series
I suppose Hymie from Get Smart won't cut it. :D
Even Macron, who, as a good French Socialist, used to be very Putin'-friendly, and sold Russia crucial equipment after 2014 (in violation of EU law) has said many times that ""Russia, in fact, has started a new type of global hybrid war. This is absolutely clear to us, the Europeans. I say this for the African continent," (July 27, 2025).
A major problem, or excuse, has been too small of a Defense Industrial Base in Europe (although many French weapons perform better than US ones, for example Aster 30 better than Patriot).
That's why, under Trump, more than two third of the European new weapon procurement spending has been in the USA. Very curious, while thousands of Russian helicopters, tanks, armor and planes have French electronics and optronics (since 2014). This also means that anti-Trump stridency by European leaders is in full contradiction with their actions, a testament to what they really believe (namely that Trump is their friend, not to say dad…).
Europe is falling into a wave of violence. A non-violent 23 year old Catholic believer, Qentin Deranque, was pursued and lynched last week in Lyon (kicked to death) by a masked organization, "Jeune Garde" created by an ultra Islamo-left French Member of Parliament, Raphaël Arnault.
This time, finally, after years of doing nothing, and with elections looming, French justice has moved into action, and arrested and jailed eleven pseudo anti-fascists... And more arrests are coming. The rot in Europe is immensely deep, it's philosophical, and can be traced back to the 1950s… And, yes, amazingly, tied to an ancient tradition of pedocriminality. I wrote many essays on it.
Could things turn around and Europe rise again? The energy “degrowth” policy in place is succumbing under the evidence of corruption, and the blows of China, USA, AI, India, Brazil, and now an increasingly furious European plebs which does not like it when told it can’t drive or that electricity’s price is ten times what it used to be (after going all electric).
Some more suggestions, with reasons...
Good:
- Robbie the Robot (Forbidden Planet): for trying to save us from ourselves
- Rosie (The Wild Robot): for admitting they didn't know what they were doing (raising teenage goslings)
- Gaia (Horizon: Zero Dawn/Forbidden West): for caring for the place, selflessly.
- CYAN (Horizon: Frozen Wilds): for solving many Gaussian integer equations while keeping a super volcano under control.
Bad:
- Hades (Horizon: Zero Dawn): was only following orders, but clearly loved its job
Complicated:
- Hephaestus (Horizon: Frozen Wilds/Forbidden West): also loved its job, but did not appreciate those durn kids on its lawn!
- 'Arthur' (Passengers): not a true AI, but a very good depiction of an expert system come LLM.
Bad: Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers
SCOTUS just shot down Trump's tariff authority.
Watch inflation fall and the stock market explode in 3....2...1...
"the Court’s decision is likely to generate other serious practical consequences in the near term. One issue will be refunds. Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U. S. Treasury. The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers. But that process is likely to be a “mess,” as was acknowledged at oral argument."
Dang, I should have bought Costco stock yesterday.
When you said Rosie I thought you meant Rosie the cleaning robot from the Jetsons.
A bad robot from the Jetsons would be Uniblab.
Patrice your thoughts are welcome here. Our civil war is a world war, and maybe only Zelensky can save us.
Thanks all. So far, I've chosen:
To those human maker/creators
whose art promised us friends
like Samantha, Data, Rosie and Robbie...
…or else gave warnings
like poor Hal, Ava, Ash and Daneel…
…or a Logic named Joe…
@Dr Brin,
Interesting that you conceive of R Daneel Olivaw as a villain. I know your reasoning for doing so, but it's an interesting take, as I've never read any of the Foundation or Robot novels with that perspective. Just as I never read Dune thinking of the Atreides as bad people.
I will note that Daneel was not written as a villain in The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. The whole zeroth law thing was a retcon.
I recommend FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH. I really really did a good job with Isaac's loose ends and I think where he was going... except that I took his implications to where he would not quite go, realizing Daneel has been lobotomizing all of humanity for 25000 years, 'for your own good.'
I did come up with a reason why that might have been justified and it required a genetic plague in our time making us all reflexively insane.
I root for the Atreides, but not their mutant mad son.
Huh I tried asking Google: "Did old Joe Kennedy support FDR saying "I'd rather lose half of my wealth to keep the workers happy than lose it all to revolution"?"
Coulda sworn Gemini woulda found that.
@Patrice:
Europe is not in flame, and the level of political violence in France is ... as it has been in the last two decades. Higher than elsewhere, sometimes somebody dies.
The rot is there, but it is certainly something entirely else.
It is "Catholicism", for the uninitiated a chiffre for white supremacy, hostility to the laizistic state France aspires to be, arch-conservatism, monarchism, and those undead dreams of colonialist empires and lots of revanchism that led to the disasters of Waterloo, Mexico, Sadowa, Sedan, Dien Bien Phu and Algeria.
It led to purposeful weakening of the European unity project (the Lissabon treaties would come in handy now) and the economic chains half of Africa was under (until the later coups started) even after gaining their "Independence".
Stephen Miller is a Fan of the Nobel "Camp of Saints", and his author Jean Raspail, who is one of the literary forefathers of this "Catholicism".
(From a European perspective, Melanchon and the populist Left are only slightly better, though. They are as willing to prostrate to Putin as the Right is.)
The rot lies in the dependance on nuclear energy with half a century old reactors which have to be cooled by imported electricity now and then and have to be shut down now and then to prevent nuclear disasters.(And let us not get started where all the Uranium is from.)
The rot lies in political elites ignoring the economic maladies of the governed. There are many parallels between areas in France, the Rust Belt and East Germany.
BTW, the world's greatest and oldest syndicate of child-abusers is the Catholic Church.
Would it be a stretch that the algos could have been modified to suppress and silence certain ideas lately?
Trump and his gang noted they would try other routes, while over here voices noted that they expect the tariffs to remain in place.
It nay be a bit soon to open the champaign.
@Dr Brin,
I think you just put way too much specificity into your question.
I did a search for this:
"Joe Kennedy" "I'd rather lose half of my wealth"
And the AI version of Google did return this:
The quote often attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. regarding losing half his wealth is:
"I’d rather lose half of my wealth than all of it" (or variations like "I'd rather give up half my fortune than lose the whole thing").
So it's not as dumb as it looks.
"...a bit soon to open the champaign."
As an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, I appreciate the typo, even if you have no idea what I'm on about.
Telling the good AIs from the bad is fraught with difficulties, mostly because the artificial creations thought most villainous tend to perform in strict accordance with their design specifications, as in the cases of WOPR & Skynet.
I therefore nominate the sarcastic Ktistec Machine from 'Arrival at Easterwine (RA Lafferty, 1973), the good android from the 'Questor Tapes' (Gene Roddenberry, 1974), the uncooperative computer ZERO from 'Rollerball' (Norm Jewison, 1975) and Proteus 4 from the 'Demon Seed (Dean Koontz, 1977).
That said, trust Celt & Der_Oger to misunderstand current events, as
(1) The recent SCOTUS ruling against Trump's tariffs is about as binding its prior 2023 rulings on the unconstitutionality of Biden's loan forgiveness plan & Harvard's race-based admission system, both of which are ongoing ever since SCOTUS declared them 'illegal'; and
(2) EU-based political violence & assassination has become a nearly every day occurrence, as in the case of the many 'nothing to see here' murders of a half-dozen AfD candidates & now Quentin Deranque's murder by the LFI, made even more desperate by the media's parodic cries of "all is well' while Europe burns.
In both the EU & the US, the Rule-of-Law has been increasingly revealed as an elitist & undemocratic fraud and sham.
Best
@Der Oger,
After I posted, it occurred to me that the region of France in question may well be spelled "Champaign" in German, which might be the origin of the county in Illinois and the one in Ohio with that name.
Here in the States, we spell the French region and the associated beverage "Champagne".
Celt,
You still have time, but I won't be doing it. At nearly $1K/share, P/E near 50, and a 0.5% dividend, I'd be risking a lot to make a little. Call options let you leverage your money more, but nearby ones currently have low volatility. Relatively cheap to buy, but that's because the stock is behaving in a relatively predictable way.
I won't be messing with it. There is a lot more volatility to be found among the chip stocks.
Even under vitamins, he's repulsive. Still, thanks for reminding me of Rollerball. As for the SCOTUS cancelling of the Trumpian tariff tantrum, well, I predicted they would choose specific issues to rule against him in order to pretend 'balance' when they will NEVER do a ruling that reduces or curb's the Putin Party's outrageous grabs of Nazi-level powers.
I think it would flow better with "and to a Logic named Joe" rather than "or".
The first "or else" provides a counterpoint between the first list and the second list.
The second 'or" just kinda hangs.
Off-topic... I know.
But... It's about the Fermi Paradox and how aliens might actually talk to each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZGyjR6Y9vw&t=16s
There has been no murder case in the AfD so far, only AfD members murdering others (see Walter Lübke).
And looking at the current state of the party, I would not be surprised if they started killing each other.
All is not well, and I often speak of "centrist" and "liberal" politicians fertilizing the ground for populist movements by catering to the wishes of the Epstein class and selling the future and common wealth of their constituents for their own power.
As an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, I appreciate the typo, even if you have no idea what I'm on about.
Oh, it was indeed a typo... I believe I know that name from Jeff Rients from the OSR blogosphere ....
Complicated: Jack Williamson's Humanoids
Re: previous discussion on bio-genesis in our solar system
Sol's accretion disk eventually evolved into a star and planets. Along the way, several factors might have balanced locally to form long lasting, stable pockets. These include gravitational force, centrifugal force, temperature, energy gradients, element concentrations (including CHNOPS), molecule concentrations (including water), properties of the stellar ignition, and perhaps others. I'm not claiming to have coined the term, but I'll call them 'Goldilocks Pockets'. Neither Kant nor Laplace had the available computational power to build such a model, but we do. Assuming that is, that GenAI leaves a few scraps for science while it concocts its massive vat of snake oil.
Re: Fermi Paradox vid in this thread
The movie CLARA (2018), sometimes also called VOYAGER, used the entangled electron pair trick to make an FTL 'radio'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_(2018_film)
JPL, working jointly with a Toronto University, found and managed to establish contact with a civ on an artificial moon that was station-keeping at the L1 of a red dwarf. How they got one of the entangled electrons to Earth is not explained. This is not exactly the same as Ursula K. le Guin's 'Ansible', but I never fully understood her physics anyway.
A comment about Trump, Glyphosate and MAHA by Belle of the Ranch.
Somehow, Trump is the Anti-Midas: Everything he touches transforms from gold to shit, being it businesses, humans, nations, alliances and now his own political base.
Trump is the Anti-Midas: Everything he touches transforms from gold to shit
Dave Sim called that a kind of reverse alchemy, turning gold into lead. However, for Von Schitzenpantz, "into shit" is indeed more appropriate. Lead at least has some utility.
There has been no murder case in the AfD so far, only AfD members murdering others...
Der_Oger's comments are accurate & succinct:
There is literally 'no case', 'no story', 'no investigation' and 'no crime' when a conservative christian is assaulted, raped or murdered in the EU, as this goes against the official narrative that stabby & rapey diversity is 'our strength'.
From the 2016 Cologne Mass Rape attacks to the Mannheim 2024 attempted arrest of an AfD stabbing VICTIM rather than the actual muslim assailant, the official DW headlines always report "no political, racial, ethnic or religious motive" when conservative christians are brutalized.
This approach is currently on full display in France with the politically & religiously motivated murder of Quentin Deranque, a baby-faced 23 year old French Catholic who was 'kicked to death' by at least 6 members of the officially "nonexistent" Antifa party who, coincidentally, all happen to belong to the leftwing France Unbowed (LFI) party in this particular instance.
Even Der_Oger admits that his "centrist" and "liberal" politicians (have sold out) the future (of) their (own) constituents in their undemocratic pursuit of power, proving only that most European liberal democracies have already collapsed, leaving only the resurgent right to clean up this globalist-created political, racial & religious shit show. For better or WORSE...
With heavy emphasis on WORSE.
Best
More confirmation on the Resurgent German Right:
Thirty-one percent of respondents nationwide agreed with the statement: "What Germany needs now is a single strong party that embodies the will of the people as a whole."
https://amp.dw.com/en/germans-approve-of-democracy-but-say-it-doesnt-work-well/a-76058634
Best
Locumranch is again in panic mode. Just some facts:
1) The US murder rates are WAY higher than over here. Especially in red rural areas.
2) Over Here, 2024 have been recorded 1281+ cases of right-wing violence vs. 532+ left-wing cases, including property damage.
3) The main conflict isn't left vs. right or natural born citizen vs. immigrant. It is up vs. down (and a bit South vs. North, East vs. West).
4) The main problem I see is the betrayal of the SPD. They have abandoned the workers in favor of the retired, and public employees. And in favor of raw political power. And yes, in pursuit of policies that favor the Epstein class.(Not that CDU/CSU or AfD are any better, to the contrary.At least, we now and then try them for corruption and espionage.)
5) The victim may have had a baby-face, but he was a fascist first and foremost. Like people of color have to fear for their life in certain areas of France & Germany, I wouldn't advise fascists to invade certain parts of Hamburg, Berlin and Leipzig, where the "Volkswillen" looks quite different. Lyon seems to be sich a place, the attack was certainly not unprovoked.
6) I should mention that the fast and decisive action of the French police and justice system shows that that part of their system works.
At least, versus left-wing extremism.
7) Oh, and please. Everyone and his dog here knows about your sadistic tendencies and your obeyance-in-advance to a caste of billionaire bullies and global rapists. You do not care about christianity and it's core messages; you do not care about this guy, you just indulge in this opportunity.
@David: Daneel, after reading your interpretation in TRIUMPH, came off to me as tragic rather than villainous. Earth's Caves of Steel (and whatever caused them) long predated his construction, much less his transformation into the Zeroth-Law-mentalic Immortal Servant at the end of ROBOTS AND EMPIRE. Even having rewired his core imperatives, he's still too constrained to generate an actual solution, because even the Zeroth Law doesn't provide the moral framework for straightforward solutions like "figure out what was altered and generate a counter-plague to reverse the change." Which version of humanity commands the greatest positronic loyalty: the past, the present, the future? The Second Law was intended to settle such issues, except that the Zeroth Law demanded the avoidance of the triggers for the chaos-plague behavior. He needed the vast supermajority of humanity super safe before he could even attempt any real investigations.
Thus, the First Empire.
What Daneel really needed was another Elijah Baley, but with the chops to handle both the terrible truth and the mathematical complexities that framed Daneel's limited robotic understanding of the solution space.
In other words, he needed Hari Seldon.
The sum total of PRELUDE, FORWARD, and the Killer B trilogy pointed me to the conclusion that Hari Seldon, the singular human being, was even more important to Daneel than the Foundations he created. Seldon was the first truly sovereign human being in millennia that Daneel could confide in, and rely upon, in the same way as Baley. And his reactions could show Daneel the perspective and viewpoint that no robot, however advanced and programmed, could ever provide.
The First Foundation was as close as Daneel and Hari could manage to re-create the original dynamic and inventive civilization of Earth. The Plan and the Second Foundation were necessary to prevent the plague from ruining the First Foundation's development. But as the Second Foundation merely replaced robotic rule with mentalic-dynastic rule, it could not remain indefinitely either: Daneel could not permit another Settler-Spacer split. Gaia, the "Third Foundation", avoided that problem at the expense of the dynamism and individuality that made the First Foundation so successful.
Like Moses, Daneel could take humanity through a multi-millennial Sinai, but he could not enter the Caanan of cognitive sovereignty. I didn't think Seldon could either, but...?
Catfish, as I recall every element you just described is right there in F.TRIUMPH. Including the Giskardian robots needing Seldon's permission to destroy the archives.
The part I didn’t remember being spelled out was how much Seldon was Baley’s successor for Daneel *personally*, not just Giskardianism as a whole.
The tragedy being, Daneel was stuck for twenty thousand years for lack of a Seldon to kick him, and thus the whole galaxy, out of his pseudo-infinite loop.
The sum total of PRELUDE, FORWARD, and the Killer B trilogy pointed me to the conclusion that Hari Seldon, the singular human being, was even more important to Daneel than the Foundations he created.
I don't want to disrespect the authors, especially the one reading this. But am I alone in feeling that the series loses something when it becomes so much the story of one Great Man, when the original trilogy was about a civilization spanning many generations, and many different individuals who rose to the occasion when needed?
In the original short stories, Hari Seldon never even appeared as a living human being. That only happened in the framing story that Asimov wrote for the novel that collected the stories. But after a mere five books like that, the series (including the Killer B books) then culminates with seven whole books about Seldon. I'm uncomfortable with that in the same way that I am about the ensemble cast of the original Star Wars giving way to a series all about the divine family Skywalker. Or flashing on Congressman Moskowitz and "Trump appears in the Epstein files more times than God does in the book about God."
I've had this discussion before, and I always have to acknowledge that Foundation's Triumph did a great job of doing what it was supposed to do. It's just that when I wished upon a star for more Foundation stories, I was hoping for something different than the goal Dr Brin had. More stories after the fashion of the originals taking place between 498 and 1060 FE.
Der_Oger proves himself to be a huge hypocrite & liar:
1) US gun-related murder rates are about 25% lower in red rural areas than in blue urban areas, the blue urban rate of 5 /100,000 as compared to a red rural rate of 3.5/100,000, the red rural rate being artificially inflated due to high rural rates of self-harm;
2) EU studies from 2005 document that muslim immigrants to Europe commit violent crimes at 2.5X the rate of European natives which is why modern EU crime statistics no longer differentiate on the basis of race, religion or nation-of-origin;
3) Using TESAT & other statistical gimmicks, Europol deliberately misrepresents the etiology of violent criminality via the reclassification of leftwing, religious & migrant violence as ordinary crime to exaggerate right-wing extremism; and, finally
4) It is an undemocratic, unelected, pro-WEF & pro-Epstein European Union which has sold the citizenry of its member nations 'down the river', as evidenced by the many European leaders that have already been implicated by the Epstein files.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/04/europe-in-the-epstein-files-how-far-is-the-continents-political-elite-implicated
hahahahaha
Larry Hart: the series loses something when it becomes so much the story of one Great Man
IMHO, the protagonist throughout was Psychohistory itself. That's why I got so deep into computational psychohistory. OGH said something recently about trying to capture what Asimov was moving towards. That's what I was doing, trying to anticipate where Asimov was headed. He was very interested in computers, especially the personal computers and networks that were the harbinger of the modern internet.
Looks like Samsung is moving their mega-fab from Texas to Ontario. I may rekindle my SELDON I psychohistory processor dreams if that kind of technology is right next door. But I'm getting old. We'll see.
Tell me this is a spoof, seriously?
https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/09/15/ethics-dunces-too-many-people-to-count-who-were-responsible-for-this/
Larry,
Heh. So does shit.
Lots of our primate cousins know exactly what to do with it.
LH I IMPLIED what happens after 500FE. Anyway, Seldon isn't THAT big or important. He serves as a convenient front man and his Plan works well to set things up for Daneels actual plan. And his MYTH lets Daneel convince the other Giskardians to eliminate the archives. But Hari does get the last laugh.,
1) Out of the twenty highest per capita murder rate counties, there are only two blue large metro areas; the rest are in the South.
2) That, even it was true, would make Americans still doubly more violent criminals.
3) Untrue. It is rather the other way round; Right-Wingers are often declared mentally i'll, while crimes of migrants are mentioned in News 15 times (Iirc) more than crimes of non-migrants.
And, besides that: There are qualitative differences between acts of right- and left-wing violence. The former is far more homocidal and directed against persons of color and LGBTQ persons, the latter against right-wingers and the police, as well as objects.*
4) Since only half of the documents are released, it is to early to make a final evaluation, but, unlike in the US, investigations are underway. In Britain, the King encouraged the Police to arrest his brother, an act the island has not seen since Charles, First of His Name, lost his head during the English revolution. Also, the elected European Parliament has passed laws that hurt the Technoligarchs and are considering to do more.
Or to be more bluntly: In the US, the Epstein class is not investigated, it runs the whole country.
*
The link to Amazon shows an entirely different cover photo
"Heh. So does shit [have utility]."
Ok, but the point of the reverse alchemy metaphor is "turning something valuable into something merely common."
The point of the scatalogical metaphor is "turning something beautiful into something disgustingly repulsive."
The latter suits DJT more appropriately. And it makes me think of all his gold-plated crap as turning to actual crap.
@Dr Brin,
I don't mean any of this as a dig at you or your fellow B's. I understand I'm talking about personal taste, and while mine is in line with 1940s Asimov, yours is much more in line with 1990s Asimov. Plus you are actually capable of writing the book, so you got to do what you want, not what I'd want.
With that out of the way and by way of explanation:
"LH I IMPLIED what happens after 500FE."
I would have preferred seeing several more adventures in that era, not just "And then a miracle occurred". But I know that's just me. Asimov himself had already deviated from the kinds of Foundation stories that enamored them to me.
Well, tell me that THIS is a spoof:
https://www.threads.com/@guy_fawkes_news/post/DVD13vDkdrZ
"John Barron" calling into a talk show to complain about the worst supreme court decision ever. The imitation is good enough that at first I thought this was really DJT himself calling, but it sounds more like decades-younger Trump than 2026-Trump. Not sickly enough, and the train of thought doesn't derail.
One more issue I had with all of the post-1980 Foundation novels, even the ones Asimov himself wrote. And I think I'm on firmer ground here than just "personal taste".
After the long search for the planet of human origin, Foundation and Earth ends on an ominous cliffhanger about the Solarian being different enough from humanity to essentially be an alien being. The final lines of that book just beg for a sequel. And not only was this never followed up on in the succeeding seven novels, but it was never even treated as something that mattered.
I'm smirking over here. My amusement come from always thinking the guy was full of crap to his modern Midas-like powers of turning things into crap. Or course he can do that. He's full of it!
Never once in his life has he NOT turned something he touches into crap. Now he's gone and done it to the GOP. Any party member who was inclined to be something better has had the good sense to get out. Those who took too long are covered in shit now and will be spending a lot of time in the showers.
While the amazom book cover has doesn't currently show the German planes on the cover, the amazon reviews do mention this and I'm able to find other blog articles dated September 2023 that mention the bad cover.
@LH: The Solarian speciation poses a deep challenge to Giskardianism, which values "humanity" with the assumption that "humanity" is a single entity that can be defined, described, and defended. Daneel was able to escape the Three Laws, but not the inflexibility of that assumption. Nobody from the era of U.S. Robotics thought their work would last long enough for that assumption to be challenged; in a sense, Daneel had a metaphysical-existential Y20K problem -- and thus, so did the First Empire and the first two Foundations.
Under the Zeroth Law, "humanity" had to be kept inside a postronically-defined box: not only to contain the chaos plague, but also to prevent Giskardian circuit collapse. This was also the real reason for the literal galactic-scale omnicaustal war crime known as the "tilling". The Zeroth and First Laws alike demanded elimination of any possible non-human sentience, lest harm be done to [individual or collective] humanity. Hence Daneel's desire to upload into an organic brain, which might permit the flexibility to complete his half-completed journey to free will. As OGH notes, the mental crutch of Hari Seldon helped but was not ultimately enough.
All the Killer B books describe variations on the point the Good Doctor was making at the end of F&E: Whether internally (Solarians) or externally (extragalactics) or from the past (the data ghosts of the exterminated aliens, slowboats evading the human-settled stars, robots showing evolutionary 'malfunctions', etc.), the confined "humanity" of the Milky Way will be challenged eventually. Just as in The End of Eternity, another of the Good Doctor's tales, if unable to adapt, humanity will be exterminated. For its own long-term safety, the confinement of Terragen sophonce must end.
Which brings us back around to Dr. Brin's comment:
I root for the Atreides, but not their mutant mad son.
I think this requires more elaboration. I am assuming for the moment that by 'the Atreides' you mean Leto I, Jessica, Paul, and Chani, and by 'mutant mad son' you mean Leto II, though Chani is the only one of those five not to be the product of extensive genetic manipulation.
But as profoundly bonkers as the God-Emperor is, both Watsonically and Doylistically, his existential goal is ironically similar to Asimov's: to release human potential from the confining chains of systems penning us into narrow possibilities, lest we be unable to adapt to internal or external challenge(s). One need not stray into the inferior adaptations of Herbert's canon to recognize that berserker-probe hunter-seekers, a re-emergence of hostile 'thinking machines', or an alien intelligence beyond known space would pose Outside Context Problems for the civilization that the Atreides inhabited. The Hyperion Cantos make that point as well, with the TechnoCore AIs playing the same role as the Giskardians or the Spacing Guild / Bene Gesserit duopoly. The Ousters have the dynamism and agency to deal with new problems, while the Hegemony, kept penned by the Core, is barely able (with help) to escape a meticulously orchestrated genocide.
So what's your beef with the talking sandworm? Is it the monstrous means, or some difference in ends that I'm not seeing?
"Nobody from the era of U.S. Robotics thought their work would last long enough for that assumption to be challenged"
In the context of the 1980s-and-beyond novels, your analysis is intriguing and I don't want to take away from that.
In the context of the 1940s stories and 1950s novels, I think it is much simpler than all that. I don't think anyone back then considered the question of what it means to be "human". The characterization of "human" in the first two Laws of Robotics was simply between humans--living beings of flesh and blood born of woman--and robots. If you asked an engineer what constituted a human being in that context, he might well have replied, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." And the robots would as well.
Robots in the early stories were meant to be tools, and the Three Laws were there to keep them as safe tools. A robot carrying a piano to your apartment wouldn't drop it on your head, and you couldn't order a robot to kill someone. That sort of thing. I never got the sense that their purpose was to prevent any and all possible harm to any and all possible humans throughout eternity.
Larry Hart,
You once told me that I puzzled you, b/c I have some rather lw positions about search and seizure law, but that lw ideology seems to "piss me off" more than rw idiocy.
Part of the reason for this is that the lw claims the "intellectual/educated" mantle, yet so much of the "scholarship" that comes from the humanities seems like made-up abstract crap to me.
One example for this is how a sci-fi reader group I once belonged to reacted to reading Asimov's original Foundation novel. This group was predominantly female, with a number working at University of Arizona. Yet, this group couldn't see any value to Asimov's ideas. Despite Asimov's concept of psychohistory inspiring many academics, these readers couldn't get past Asimov's lack of female characters in his first foundation novel.
So, to them, literary analysis meant seeing if a work checked the DEI boxes.
I couldn't get them to look past those issues to see the concept of history being driven by wider social forces rather than individual choices. Or Asimov's achievement in being able to pull off an entertaining narrative where character choices were entirely meaningless.
Another example is getting decried as an ignoramus for pushing back against gender ideology. For example, I was attacked for being a sexist when I said that a fantasy novel having a female "king's champion" prevented my "suspension of disbelief."
Notice that I was just expressing a personal opinion. Not that this made the book unenjoyable for anyone. That I had experience watching elite female judo competitors get dominated by mediocre males in training sessions made no difference. Facts didn't matter to them.
Evolutionary biologists have been run out of a elite institutions for insisting there are only two sexes. Since I wrote an entire novel built on the behavioral underpinnings of warfare (based on sociobiology), well...to me it's about debunking pseudoscientific nonsense.
Richard Dawkins, formerly a lw darling for ridiculing creation science, now lines up with the despised j.k. Rowling in the UK battles over gender ideology. Now, Dawkins is persona non grata among the DEI types.
The "academic authority" for gender ideology comes from cultural anthropologists and gender studies professors. The gender studies professors are the worst. 2nd wave feminist icon Camile Paglia wrote about getting into viscous battles over gender studies programs failing to include any requirement to study biology. She said these people usually came from literature backgrounds, and were entirely hostile to biology. They tend to teach their students contempt for any field that recognizes evolutionary biology influence on human behavior.
Now we have entire field of study in the humanities built on logical fallacies. So certain lw ideologues who profess intellectual superiority and allegiance to science end up spouting nonsense. While you can make a compelling case for even greater stupidity on the right, since these lw academics go after fields familiar to me, they're the ones that piss me off the most.
For example, I really resent being labeled with various kinds of isms and ists because I won't sign on to factual bullshit.
And THERE we have the problem with "DEI" - it is not the actual idea that we should not be using gender or race for decisions - THAT is IMHO perfectly good
The PROBLEM is twofold
(1) People getting far too "tight" and requiring an adherance to rigid standards that cannot be criticized
(2) (The other side) People who make judgements based on race and gender but who deny it
"So, to them, literary analysis meant seeing if a work checked the DEI boxes."
I also ran into that sort of feminist on campus in the 1980s. So I know what you're talking about. The one that really pisses me off is the notion that logic and mathematical truth are simply artifacts of white European imperialism.
What I don't see is that sort of leftism represented in the Democratic Party itself. Any congresspeople or Senators or governors or mayors or presidents, or anyone running for such offices.
I see right-wing authoritarian fascism represented in Republicans so often that its very banality is now an excuse for treating it as normal and pro-American. And most Republicans who aren't actively fascist are tolerant of it to the extent of refusing to reign it in.
I can be pissed off at some leftists and still support the Democratic Party. I have a hard time understanding how someone can be against fascism and still support Republicans.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention...
"Whether internally (Solarians) or externally (extragalactics) or from the past (the data ghosts of the exterminated aliens, slowboats evading the human-settled stars, robots showing evolutionary 'malfunctions', etc.), the confined "humanity" of the Milky Way will be challenged eventually."
But the books didn't show Daneel learning from experience with the Solarian. Because they jumped back 500 years and never returned . So whatever Daneel did to ward off an alien threat was being done in Hari Seldon's lifetime, having nothing to do with the Solarian that Golan Trevize encountered. That plot thread still went nowhere.
The way I see it is that biological 'sex' of an individual is precisely defined by gamete size and, by that definition, is binary.
However, 'gender' is a social classification, and is much more plastic.
The problem arises when you conflate the two terms. It's not helped by them using the same female/male scale. (and yes, I've made that scan left to right...)
Larry,
I think you have to have willful blindness not to see how a lot of the humanities ideology has become part of Democrat Party politics.
From punishing schools and businesses for failing to support gender ideology, from workplace pressure to conform or lose your job, or for parents to lose parental rights unless they support gender affirming care, it's all over Democrat politics.
So, you can argue that fascism from the right is worse. But, I wrote a long post about how what we're seeing in Minnesota today is the culmination of 30 years of legal jurisprudence that has enabled the Trump administration to use ICE as an authoritarian instrument. BTW, that legal jurisprudence came about under BOTH democrat and republican administrations.
Just to cite some examples of creeping authoritarianism rising through 4th and 5th amendment policies advanced under Democrat administrations, I'd point to Obama's DOJ vastly expanding use of "sneak and peek" warrants. I believe sneak and peek warrants, which allows LEOs to break into a citizen's home to access their computer, extract information, then leave without providing notice to the citizen that the government has searched their data, first originated under Bush 2.
However, under Obama, sneak and peek warrants vastly expanded to the point of becoming routine. Obama also insisted that he had the right to order the death of a US citizen, but the rationale that allowed him to do so was "national security" thus this power couldn't be questioned. Furthermore, the rationale wasn't public b/c it was protected by the "national security" umbrella.
So, basically, the Obama administration was the one that insisted it could point its bony finger of death at any citizen, decapitate the citizen with their scythe, and that no one could question it because the whole process was protected by "national security." Somehow, it's pretty elitist for Obama to claim the ability kill a citizen, but the plebs don't get to know under what circumstances that Lord Obama could do so.
"And THERE we have the problem with "DEI" - it is not the actual idea that we should not be using gender or race for decisions - THAT is IMHO perfectly good"
One problem I see is that the right and the left perceive the dynamic in two widely different ways.
Many on the right assert humorously that DEI stands for "Didn't Earn It". I'll credit that at least some of them mean that blacks or women were just given positions that would not have been given to a white man unless he did the work to get there. That the minorities get a free pass, which risks their jobs being done by an unqualified individual.
Whereas it sounds to my ear as if they are saying that only by being a white man does someone "earn" their job--that others are unqualified based on race and gender alone. Which is ironic in the sense that they're saying that minorities have to "earn" it by proving themselves qualified, while white men are assumed to be so. The equal-and-opposite of what they accuse DEI of being about.
"I think you have to have willful blindness not to see how a lot of the humanities ideology has become part of Democrat Party politics."
I'll cop to bias. "Willful blindness" is a bit too far.
"From punishing schools and businesses for failing to support gender ideology, from workplace pressure to conform or lose your job, or for parents to lose parental rights unless they support gender affirming care, it's all over Democrat politics."
I don't work in academia or politics, so maybe I don't see the examples you do. These days, schools are punished for supporting nonconforming students, and workplace pressure to lose your job is applied for such felonies as not sufficiently genuflecting to Charlie Kirk.
"BTW, that legal jurisprudence came about under BOTH democrat and republican administrations."
On this I will agree. My admittedly-biased view is that post Reagan, Democrats felt the need to act like Republicans--or at least to accept Republican framing of issues--in order to be a viable party. So they went with "tough on crime" or "tough on immigration" or "deficit hawk" because they thought that's what voters rewarded. When Hillary voted for Iraq War II, she probably thought in 2003 that any other position was political suicide. By the time she ran in primaries against Obama, she might have wished she had done otherwise.
I don't love Democrats as much as despise Republicans. And in the system we have, not the one I wish we had, the only way to vote out the one is to vote for the other.
Sorry Catfish, but I despise Paul, as well. Let Sr pushed back against the wretched feudal nastiness a teensy bit. Paul rationalized total oppression. And there is no way at all that the total crushing of the human spirit under Paul and then LetoII led to any "Golden Path' or resilience against a difficult future.
I'd lace a decade's spice with poison so every House and Guild perished. Isolated, some planet or another would rediscover freedom and science and restore travel the right way.
Haven't dived back into the TV Foundation series. The wholly origal elements like the clone emperors were actually kinda cool and switching as many characters as possible to female was great. Isaac brought in mystical mental powers and that sucked and I evaded that 95% in FT but it became unavoidable... but having them be part of the ORIGINAL foundation story chafed my hide.
The existence of dippy leftist dogmatists is not at issue. Nearly all of the institutions of science fiction... all the awards n' such... have been ruined by a circle-jerk of raving sanctimony junkies... who are nevertheless only 1% as bad as the vastly worse and vastly more numerous sanctimony junkies of the other extreme. At least the DIRECTION they want to go is somewhat akin to mine, a future when humans can redefine themselves to a very large degree with the freedom to pursue their own eccentric (harmless) dreams.
But yeah, their dogmatism now hurls hatred at democracy (like the MAGA jerks) and at science, and at history (would any of their g-g-g-g-grandmas NOT slap them silly?) but above all Mother Nature, in which there are anecdotal exceptions to heterosexuality, but way way way exception.
Of course the real ham they do is giving Foxites fools to point at screaming "SEE? ALL liberals are like THAT!!!"
@John: You are not wrong. The Obama administration continued to use and expand a route of covert authoritarianism that began after 9/11 and now serve Trump 2 a machine capable of total global surveillance and suppression. (Well, almost. Anyone but me who has seen the Gerald Ford having difficulties with it's sewage? That is somehow ... telling )
Slippery slopes and such things. What once was directed against foreign terrorists is now used against the own, domestic political dissidents.
And that machine has become a giant organism of itself that will fight to the death to maintain it's size and Power. And to eat and grow, eat and grow, eat and grow, feasting on budgets, humans, principles and the guardrails that were installed to check their powers. Growing the tendrils and tentacles around everybodies necks, advancing into the smallest corners.
It only spares it's handlers which faeed it, and force it to Look away and grow only in certain directions.
For a moment, try to imagine what it would have meant if it had been used against the Epstein class.
However, you speak out against DEI which was, so I understand it, a direct approach to suppress systemic discrimination.
Those tools are always ugly to behold because they shatter the illusion of meritocracy and equality before the law. (Not to speak of of seemingly aiding fodder and growth to the monster.)
They hold up a mirror ... we don't want to look into, making us angry against the maker and the mirror. And make us susceptible to the whispers of that other monster that wants to shatter all implements and tools of enlightenment, justice, common wealth and peaceful coexistence.
It never was gone and desperately wants to return.
Now the ugly truth: both monsters always have been of the same species. They sometimes seperate, and sometimes embrace and fuse with each other, first in darkness, then in open daylight.
The only way to make the first one useful is to leash it with transparency, responsibility, inclusion and moderation.
That said ...you are against DEI. In a world that is still dominated by old white men with money, how would you fight systemic discrimination, exploitation and injustice ( the other DEI)?
John @2:03,
This group was predominantly female, with a number working at University of Arizona. Yet, this group couldn't see any value to Asimov's ideas. Despite Asimov's concept of psychohistory inspiring many academics, these readers couldn't get past Asimov's lack of female characters in his first foundation novel.
So, out of idle curiosity, how long did you discuss their concerns before trying to get them to concentrate on the overall themes of the book?
About SF robots: how about the AIs in Iain Banks's Culture series? I'd rate them all as Complicated. They're Good enough to deserve to exist, and Bad enough to be able to exist. Don't mess with the Culture.
In particular, there's Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahen Xato Trabiti, also known as Mawhrin-Skel, who is Complicated leaning Bad. Then there's the Hub Mind of the Orbital Masaq', who is Complicated because Tragic.
Also Complicated, but leaning Good, is Lafferty's Ktistec Machine. That jester is not just in Arrive At Easterwine, but is all over laughing Lafferty's opus. It's an early instance of an SF trope: The Snarky Computer. It's an indirect portrait of snarky programmers.
What about Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome? You can have people with testes that are female in most other ways. I think it is a mistake to try to define sex on any single characteristic. Sexes are populations and populations are most usefully based on multiple characteristics most of them with gradations.
"Many on the right assert humorously that DEI stands for "Didn't Earn It"."
The Trump cabinet, administration and judicial appointees SCREAMS" Didn't Earn It".
NONE of them are anywhere near competent -
Their DEI stands for decadence, egotism and incompetence.
Huh. I thought it was "incontinence."
For a brief moment the Republican were breathing a sigh of relief .
SCOTUS ended Trump's idiotic tariffs, with the potential to heal the economy and reduce inflation by election day - while offering Trump and the GOP a face saving off ramp (aka blame the Supreme Court).
Then Trump threw a temper tantrum and simply imposed 10% global tariffs out of thin air.
No wait, now its 15%!
So we still have significant tariffs for 150 days or 5 months, which takes us to August when people harden their voting decisions.
The GOP is going to suffer a bloodbath.
It will be fun to watch.
My surprise is that you found any of the original Atreides worthy of praise: they are at best the lesser evil.
I give young Paul credit for pushing back initially, but he succumbed quickly. How could he not? Leaving any quantum-locking "destiny" aside, each of the societies surrounding him had their own systematic child abuse program to 'mold' him: the Bene Gesserit gene-pimps, the brain-molding Mentats, the social-Darwinist Fremen, the strict feudal indoctrination of the Imperium... what free will he was able to wield was purely the product of the Gambit Pileup he experienced.
I despise what Paul became, but I also pity him. The final proof of his humanity, rather than apotheosis, is how he failed to escape the horrors long prepared for him. His father, 'merely' human, accomplished more in that department. Paul had the option to wipe out all the Houses and Guilders at the end of the first book: destroying the spice would have had exactly that effect. Gladstone did take the equivalent option at the end of Fall of Hyperion, destroying as much of the farcaster net as she could. She knew that action would cause vast death and suffering - but inaction would cause near-extinction. With a lifetime of experience, she had the fortitude to make the call. Paul, forced to choose with a still underdeveloped seventeen-year-old prefrontal cortex, couldn't pull that trigger.
Leto II was simply a monster by any standard, and even he knew it; even his rationalization is based on visions only he could see. Of course every Idaho eventually rebelled: even if he was telling the truth, the worm-man's external justification amounted to 'trust me'. Um, no?
Foreign officials that have been arrested or investigated for their appearance in the Epstein Files:
As of February 2026, the release of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case has led to the arrest of high-profile foreign nationals, particularly in the UK, for misconduct, including former British Prince Andrew (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) and former UK ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson. Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was also charged with corruption, marking a major international expansion of investigations into the files.
Prince Andrew (UK): Arrested on Feb. 19, 2026, on suspicion of misconduct in public office regarding allegations he shared confidential information with Epstein while serving as a UK trade envoy.
Peter Mandelson (UK): Arrested on Feb. 23, 2026, on suspicion of misconduct in public office for allegedly passing confidential government information to Epstein.
Thorbjørn Jagland (Norway): Former prime minister of Norway and former head of the Council of Europe was charged with "gross corruption" on Feb. 12, 2026, following the revelation of emails regarding trips and financial ties to Epstein.
Jean-Luc Brunel (France): Though detained earlier in 2020 as part of the French probe, the French modeling agent was a key foreign figure linked to the trafficking network who was held in a French jail before his death in 2022.
Ongoing Investigations & Resignations:
Mona Juul (Norway): Former Norwegian ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, she resigned in Feb. 2026 after Norwegian authorities launched a corruption investigation into her and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, regarding financial links to Epstein.
Terje Rød-Larsen (Norway): A diplomat currently under investigation by Norwegian authorities for financial ties, with reports indicating Epstein left $10 million in his will for the couple's children.
Jack Lang (France): Former French culture minister resigned from his position at the Arab World Institute in Feb. 2026 after investigations into financial links with Epstein.
These arrests follow the release of over 3 million pages of documents by the U.S. Justice Department in 2026.
Americans that have been arrested or investigated for their appearance in the Epstein Files:
Zilch.
Because in America we have two standards of law:
The rich who are protected by the law but not bound by it.
and everyone else who are bound by the law but not protected by it.
Heard on Stephanie Miller's show:
"Being conscious during this time feels a lot like being awake during surgery."
The creeping illogic that John_V describes as 'humanities-based' (which others describe as 'wokeness') is what our fine host describes as IDEALISM, the false belief that what 'should be' in terms of potential, fairness, equality & interchangeability is somehow 'more real' than observable reality.
It's reality denial, this rejection of observable empiric differences, this insistence that that everything & everyone is 'equal' in terms of gender, intelligence, inclination, morality & race when Science is little more than the recognition, acknowledgement, the cataloging of & an attempt to explain these many differences.
These things have never been, are not & will never be EQUAL, which is not an argument either for or against the relative SUPERIORITY of one variant over another, but a simple statement of non-equivalence & non-interchangeability, as no amount of educational remediation can transform a simpleton into a super-genius, an x-chromosome into a y-chromosome and an orangutang in to an aardvark.
Best
The host states - "but above all Mother Nature, in which there are anecdotal exceptions to heterosexuality, but way way way exception"
Reference to prove this claim?
Everything I have seen published in the last 20 years utterly refutes your claim of way way way exception (SIC).
Or are you just facts out of the air to support your claims in a field that you are not a professional in?
Catfish 'n Cod,
Regarding Paul, I think David's take, and your's to some extent, require an interpretation of the story that amounts to a criticism that what the author wrote is not believable to you. Criticisms better aimed at the author than at the characters in his story.
Herbert wrote in his stories that the prescient abilities and ancestral memories of the BG, Guild, Paul, etc. were really real and that the information gained from them was true. Herbert was on the verbose side as an author and he spent many, many words describing all that. That the jihad would happen with or without Paul, that extinction of the human race was nearly inevitable and the only paths to avoid that extinction were horrible. Herbert wrote that these things were true.
He also spent a lot of words showing us that Paul very reluctantly took the path to power in order to try and limit the death and destruction of the jihad and to put humanity on a path that would avoid extinction. Despite knowing that choosing so would mean the death of Chani. He wrote a Paul that would much rather have gone off with Chani into the desert to live a quiet, private life. He wrote a Paul that was eventually broken by what a path that avoided human extinction would cost in lives and misery, and what the monstrous personal cost would be, and who eventually completely failed and gave up because he couldn't handle it.
I know about statements that Herbert wrote about being appalled that so many readers saw Paul as a Hero. And I sort of get that. I don't see him as a hero so much myself but rather as a tragic figure in the Greek tradition. But he isn't a villain. And I understand why many see Paul as a hero, and that's because that's the way Herbert wrote him. Herbert wrote a story about a guy who starts out as much more decent than just about any other characters in a pretty thoroughly nasty society, who makes choices to try and limit pain and misery and avoid the extinction of the human race, all at great personal cost. Herbert wrote all of that as being true in the Dune Universe. And held those things to be true all the way through to his final book, thousands of years after Paul and Leto II when the extinction they saw was successfully avoided.
Criticisms to the effect that Paul was a monster don't correspond well, IMO, with what Herbert wrote. Arguing that Paul, and even Leto II, must have lied about their prescient abilities or used them merely to gain personal power is, to my mind, to retcon the story, or maybe a statement that you weren't able to suspend your disbelief with respect to those prescient abilities. Nothing wrong with that. Prescience is fantastical after all. But using that to arrive at an interpretation that Paul was a garden variety, cliche, bad guy dictator who lied about his abilities for the purpose of gaining as much power as possible, or get his rocks off, or whatever, is clearly contrary to what Herbert wrote. Though I agree that that is a more realistic story than the one Herbert wrote.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx
More mathematically illiterate & anti-scientific mumbo-jumbo from our woke friend who argues that a self-reported 7.1% LGBT+ prevalence actually represents a 'new' statistical NORM, even though a clear 92.9% majority of US citizenry identify as heterosexual.
There's no reasoning with fanatics like this, since they are literally AT WAR with statistically observable reality.
The following are accepted synonyms for the term 'exception':
Abnormality, anomaly, oddity, outlier.
"And I understand why many see Paul as a hero, and that's because that's the way Herbert wrote him."
In the sort of boys' adventure story form that the first book followed, Paul did indeed play the role of the hero. I maintain that it is very difficult to induce one's readers to reject the POV of the main protagonist, especially when the form of the story is so easily recognizable.
"Herbert wrote a story about a guy who starts out as much more decent than just about any other characters in a pretty thoroughly nasty society, who makes choices to try and limit pain and misery and avoid the extinction of the human race, all at great personal cost."
I'd say that is also true of Leto (the first) except for the "avoid the extinction of the human race" part. That's where Paul transcended his role as Ducal heir in a feudalistic system and reached for a higher goal.
To mangle Jesus Christ, Superstar for a moment, I can imagine Paul singing something like:
Neither you, father, nor the Landsarad Council,
Nor the Harkonnens, nor the Fremen,
Nor Gurney, nor the Mentats, nor the Bene Gesserit, nor the Guild,
Nor doomed humanity itself
Understand what power is
Understand what glory is
Understand at all
Understand at all
After his successful invasion of Arrakis and defeat of House Atreides, the Baron mentions to his nephew Nefud that there are 5,000,000 people living on Arrakis. By this he means the people of the towns and villages. He is later stunned to hear from Thufir Hawat that the Fremen account for at least an additional 10,000,000. Given a total population of 15,000,000 on a planet as harsh as Arrakis, it is reasonable to assume that a typical world of the empire has a population much larger - perhaps by as much as an order of magnitude. An average planet's population could therefore be approximately 150,000,000.
In "Appendix II The religion of Dune", there is an indication that the number of Landsraad worlds was approximately 13,000 (80,000,000 dead in rioting at an average of approximately 6,000 dead per world). This religious rioting occurred during the CET conference immediately before the establishment of the Guild monopoly on space travel (circa first century BG). The Fremen jihad occurred approximately 103 centuries later. During this time, we can assume continued steady growth of the empire. Given the socially rigid and technologically conservative nature of the Corrino empire, this growth was probably gradual instead of exponential. It would be reasonable to assume an empire of 15,000 to 20,000 heavily and moderately populated worlds by the time of Muad'Dib. Not included in this total are all of the small colonies, smuggler bases, research facilities, etc. which could bring the total number of inhabited worlds to about 100,000. I believe a reasonable estimate of the empire's population at the start of the Fremen jihad would therefore be approximately 30,000,000,000,000 (30 trillion).
With a total population of 15 million Fremen and converted townspeople (who fought alongside the Fremen in the Battle of Arrakeen), Arrakis would appear at first glance to have too small a population base to launch a major war of conquest. Given the warlike nature of the Fremen and their minimal logistical needs it is quite possible that Muad'Dib could field a force of 5 million. During WWII Great Britain achieved a similarly high ratio of soldiers to civilians. It is also reasonable to assume that Fremen women fought alongside the men, greatly increasing the available pool of recruits (and providing the origins of the Fish Speakers).
A typical legion of the time represented an infantry force of about 30,000 soldiers. The "tail" to the legion’s "teeth" would include logistics, engineering, medical, staff, communications, other support battalions, pacification cadres, Qizarate missionaries, propagandists, clerks, accountants, spies (and spies on the spies) - as described by Stilgar in his Zabulon computations. On average, a region and its support formations would probably number approximately 50,000. An army of 5 million would therefore be able to field approximately 100 legions.
A typical Landsraad planetary defense force probably equaled 1 to 2 legions per world. Thufir Hawat never expected the Harkonnens and Sarduakar to invade Arrakis with a force larger than 10 brigades (1 legion equivalent). The 10 legions used to attack House Atreides on Arrakis was an incredibly large and expensive force by contemporary standards. The small sizes of the Landsraad military establishments was dictated by the cost of arming the mostly mercenary Landsraad forces and the great expense of Guild transport.
The Fremen faced no such financial constraints. Being religiously motivated volunteers made them considerably cheaper than Landsraad mercenaries. Guild transport was free since Muad'Dib controlled the spice. Conversely, the Fremen's opponents would be denied Guild transport and be isolated on their individual worlds, unable to coordinate a common defense or shift resources to meet a new Fremen offensive.
Korba mentions that the 12-year long jihad had brought 10,000 worlds into "the shining light" of Muad'Dib's religion. This is probably a round number and not a precise figure since all but a fraction of mankind had been conquered by the jihad. Assuming the number of worlds conquered by the jihad is closer to 14,000, the Fremen would have to conquer an average of nearly 1,200 worlds per year or 100 per month. If the Harkonen/Sarduakar invasion of Arrakis is any indication, this may not be as improbable as it sounds. The defeat of House Atreides by an overwhelming invasion force was accomplished in a matter of days or weeks. A military force of 100 legions with unlimited transport could attempt it.
More realistically, it can be assumed that only a small percentage of the Fremen legions were actively engaged in combat at any one time. However, this is counter-balanced by the fact that many planets and their ruling houses could see after the first wave of Fremen conquests that resistance was futile. Most would probably surrender, publicly embrace Muad'Dib's religion, and accept a token Fremen garrison. Many Great Houses probably saved their skins in this way, surviving until Alia's regency. The vast majority of the 61 billion civilian casualties (0.2% of the estimated imperial population of 30 trillion) cited by Paul probably occurred during the first years of the jihad.
Tougher opponents such as the Ixian Confederacy or Zabulon would be either co-opted by negotiations or crushed with overwhelming force in a short brutal campaign (30 legions were used to conquer Zabulon). Post conquest peace would be maintained by pacification cadres, the Qizarate priesthood, native militias commanded by Fremen officers, locally recruited constabularies and the occasional Fremen garrison. Given the number of planets conquered by the jihad, it would be a rare world which had a Fremen garrison larger than one brigade.
Paul reasoned that the Jihad was necessary because mankind was stagnating with most of the empire's population being serfs tied to the land and never leaving their planet.
And truly the Jihad was a brutal genocide, killing 61 billion people on 10,000 worlds (wiping out 40 religions and sterilizing 90 planets) - or about 6,000,000 people per world.
That number is not a coincidence as it matched the numbers killed in the Holocaust x 10,000. And that was the point Herbert was trying to make. Paul even compares himself to an "Emperor Hitler" he saw in a vision of the past.
But after the Jihad the former serfs were free to travel the stars, especially on pilgrimage to Arrakis, mixing gene pools, expanding commerce, etc.
So that leaves us with a question: was Paul a murderer or a liberator, or both?
The host was speaking about the animal kingdom, you pathetic pile of shit.
If I'm mistaken in the host's intent, even 7% is not "way way way exception" (SIC).
The host here exaggerates often to make his points. It is a poor habit of his.
Follow up on the Landsraad defense forces. With each Landsraad world defending itself against Paul's Jihad with about 2 legions (100,000 soldiers and support staff) - and assuming the Fremen did not take prisoners - that would be about 1 billion enemy combatants killed by the Fremen.
The remaining 60 billion would be civilians. A 60:1 ratio.
By comparison, Hitlers invasion of Russia resulted in about 10 million military deaths and another 10 million civilian deaths, a 1:1 ratio (though if Hitler had succeeded, the German Ostplan would have resulted in 100 million civilian deaths).
As for the Jihad's civilian victims we don't know if they were a byproduct of starvation and disease in a subsistence population, deaths from spice withdrawals among the middle and upper classes, or deliberate executions. Probably all of the above but mostly the later.
Upon hearing from Paul about "Emperor Hitler", Stilgar thought he had killed 6 million by himself, perhaps with lasguns, When told he killed by sending out his legions, Stilgar was not impressed.
"Upon hearing from Paul about "Emperor Hitler", Stilgar thought he had killed 6 million by himself, perhaps with lasguns"
Tucker Carlson and his ilk make that same rhetorical point. "Hitler didn't kill anyone." "Hitler didn't put anyone in a concentration camp." See, it was the evil German deep state that did all the bad stuff.
So COBOL rides off into the sunset. But FORTH is still here, and always will be. Vibe coding can't write useful software in 20 bytes. GenAI doesn't do elegance.
https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/ibm-crashes-11-as-anthropic-threatens-cobol-empire
https://substack.com/home/post/p-187732272
Not sure if the link works without a Substack subscription, but in any case, the excerpt is why I posted. Malcolm Nance agree with our host.
...
The unending worship of King Leonidas in the Spartan movie 300. How many times will you see the Spantan helmet and hear “This. Is. America” … with a mimicking kick of someone into a pit? They love the brutality of that movie and the pitting 300 of what they think were white men against the combined armies of people of color. All balderdash. Themistocles won the war against the Persians and saved Greece.
...
I'll only nitpick to say that Miller wasn't doing "white men vs colored" so much as white Europeans vs Persians--the former metaphorically standing in for Christians (albeit 500 years too early) and the latter for Iranian Muslim terrorists (albeit what...1200 years too early?).
It's worth noting that Leto II was trying to free Humanity from fate by working towards a genetic line that was invisible to prophecy, which he succeeded in doing. So he may be getting more of a bad rap than he deserves here.
Then again, what are those people likely to do to the rest with their advantage? Furthermore, did it really require 3,500 years of feudal servitude to achieve this? As Viktor and Jayce say to Heimedinger in Arcane, when he's challenged for his overly cautious attitude to improving the lot of people in Piltover: "humans don't live for centuries!"
Persians have a similar skin tone as greeks as well. The analogy is just stupid.
The analogy is just stupid.
I was explaining, not advocating.
"Leto II was trying to free Humanity from fate by working towards a genetic line that was invisible to prophecy"
Caveat emptor, I never made it past the fourth book and I hardly remember details from that one. Nevertheless, I'd argue that "invisible to prophesy" just means that no one can see what's going to happen, not that bad things won't still happen. They'll just be surprises.
The Invisible Man wasn't immune to being struck by a vehicle. In fact, invisibility to the driver makes such an event more likely, not less.
Also, If you had to choose between living in Greece (especially Sparta) and Persia, at least as a slave, the choice is quite easy.
Except you want to be a cruel slave master, first and foremost.
But maybe that is the analogy, too: red rural white warriors again the colored hordes of the big evil blue cities.
See, it was the evil German deep state that did all the bad stuff.
Well, later the deep state pretended that Hitler and his paladins were the sole perpetrators.
Celt said...
"Paul reasoned that the Jihad was necessary because mankind was stagnating with most of the empire's population being serfs tied to the land and never leaving their planet."
That's not really what Herbert wrote, though. He wrote that the jihad was going to happen with or without Paul. That's what Paul's prescience showed him, and in the story his abilities and the information gleaned from them is presented as being real. He wrote that Paul very much wanted to prevent it, but that there was nothing he could do to stop it. So instead he tried to guide it in such a way as to limit the destruction and misery.
"Well, later the deep state pretended that Hitler and his paladins were the sole perpetrators."
I wasn't trying to excuse the ones who carried out the programs. But the point of Tucker's argument is that Hitler (and by analogy, Trump) is unfairly tarred as doing evil, because the individual leader didn't/doesn't do any of the horrific things with his own hands.
Strangely enough, this circles back to the Dune discussion. As if Hitler knew that the Holocaust would happen with or without him, so he managed to guide it in such a way as to limit the destruction and misery.
@Darrell E: Even if the spice was destroyed? I will not dispute that Paul chose collaboration, nor that he is a tragic figure for being one of those trying to limit the damage. I will not take the purist viewpoint that 'twould be better to go be a more justified Achilles-in-his-tent. I am saying that a more mature Paul might have chosen to destroy the spice -- and might even have been right to do so. I am also saying that while we might Doylistically know that Paul's prescience, genetic memory, etc. was real, Watsonically there was no way to know that without close personal observation.
My take is that the truly heroic characters of the Dune mythos were the Kynes family, who accomplished more on Arrakis in two generations than a hundred generations of the Imperial system. Pardot, Liet, and Chani discovered far more about the nature of the spice, the sandworm cycle, Arrakis' bizarre habitability, and its geologic past than anyone before. Given another generation or two of undisturbed research, they might well have found how Arrakis became tescified, and where the sandworm actually came from -- because, whether natural or engineered, the sandworm/spice system is a brilliant trap for humanity.
I never understood why destroying the spice was a credible treat. Since spice was in the very air they breathed on Arrakis, destroying the spice would doom every Fremen to a painful death by addictive withdrawal.
But Keynes ultimate goal was terraforming Arrakis into a lush green water world paradise.
Which would have killed off the worms and destroyed the spice.
Leto II knew where the sandworms came from - "somewhere else".
The sandworm/spice system is a classic hydraulic despotism.
"Hydraulic despotism - a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to a liquid that the population is dependent on for life.”
Originally that meant water.
The real power of the god-kings that ruled mankind's first civilizations wasn't chariot armies or priests performing sacrifices in temples and pyramids. It was their control of the construction and operation of complex systems of irrigation and flood control that made life possible for large numbers of people in river valleys from the Nile, to Mesopotamia, to the Indus, to the Yangtze. The principle was applied with other engineering structures such as the qanats of Persia, the aqueducts of Rome, the floating farms (chinampas) of the Aztecs, and the terraced farms built by the Inca's to collect run-off from the slopes of the Andes.
The central government ruled by the god-kings could organize the labor (draft peasants, serfs and slaves) and assign the resources (aka tax the peasants) to make these systems possible. Living standards actually improved and populations exploded (compared to adjacent hunter-gather tribes) which increased the wealth and power of the god-kings further while making their subjects utterly dependent on their hydraulic systems to stay alive. The nobility provided military leadership and controlled financial wealth, while the priests kept the people docile and unquestioning by glorifying the god-kings.
This theocratic feudalism is mankind's natural default governmental and social state. It's basically no different than a troop of baboons led by an alpha male and his entourage. Socially we are just like any other primate, which makes real democracy very difficult for our species to establish and maintain. Democracy is unnatural and requires constant effort and vigilance to ensure its survival.
Fast forward to the 20th century and water is replaced by oil.
Our entire society depends on oil like the Babylonians needed the channelized flood waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. Oil made possible the current population explosion, just like hydraulic engineering allowed a population explosion of the first civilizations. Oil oligarchs either rule directly (as in Saudi Arabia, Putin's Russia or the state of Texas) or via the mechanism of staged voting and hacked elections (2016) and controlled media (such as Fox news or the Russian media). They lead us into wars for the control of oil like some Egyptian general or pharaoh commanding his chariots (and fighting over the same terrain 3,000 years ago). Meanwhile, the new nobility has accumulated wealth to a level that would make a pre-revolutionary French aristocrat green with envy.
The totalitarians of the 20th century supposedly acted on behalf of the people, but they merely changed the names of the players. The god-king became "Dear Leader". The Nobility became "The Party". The priesthood became the "Ministry of Propaganda". But those systems become untenable due to excessive warfare and stifling of the economy. Having learned from the past, a more subtle approach is being tried by the oil oligarchs.
The subtlety can be easily seen in the function of the new priesthood. The one main difference between then and now is in the function of the modern priesthood (aka the media and to a lesser extent televangelists). Whereas the ancient priesthoods existed to exalt the god-kings, modern media-priests exist to hide their very existence from the general public. In either case it requires sleight of hand to hoodwink the populace. Elections get hacked and hijacked, becoming no different than ancient religious ceremonies originally intended to keep the people docile.
And this is why distributed solar energy is so important - it gives everyone the equivalent of their own well.
Technology has a history of setting people free. Mao used to say that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun". He was half right, freedom grows out of a gun barrel as well. Prior to the invention of gunpowder, warfare was waged by highly skilled warriors who spent a lifetime training in the martial arts (Spartan hoplites, Roman legions, feudal knights, Japanese samurai). The vast majority of people were smelly peasants who got slaughtered enmasse by small numbers of the professional solders. Those with a monopoly on violent skills lorded over those who did not. But a musket gives even a smelly peasant the power to kill an expensive and highly trained knight on horseback at a safe distance (knowing this, the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan actually banned fire arms to preserve samurai primacy). Gunpowder made the American and French revolutions possible. It made modern democracy possible. Gunpowder broke the back of the nobility.
Similarly, until the invention of the printing press, reading and writing was the sole province of the priesthood who controlled all knowledge. The printing press made books cheap, broke the chains of the inquisition and made scientific knowledge possible, as well as constitutional law not subject to a ruler's whims. The internet has further democratized the flow and creation of knowledge (the net neutrality fight can be best seen as a reaction to the internet similar to the inquisition burning books). The printing press broke the back of the priesthood.
Renewable solar energy breaks the back of our current hydraulic despotism in the same way that gunpowder and the printing press democratized deadly violence and knowledge. Once renewable energy takes hold our entire political power system rooted in control of oil collapses. It will break the backs of the modern god-kings.
Celt: Technology has a history of setting people free
"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them." - Isaac Asimov
Begun, the Slop Wars have.
Use the Forth, Luke.
Catfish 'n Cod said...
"I am also saying that while we might Doylistically know that Paul's prescience, genetic memory, etc. was real, Watsonically there was no way to know that without close personal observation."
If we were in the story, sure, we couldn't know it without close personal observation over a lifetime, or several. But as readers we can know it. Unless Herbert has intentionally misled us, because he pretty clearly wrote that those things were real in his storyverse. Of course, that is possible. But it seems unlikely.
I agree that the Kynes family are the most worthy of being called heroes.
On destroying the spice, I'd presume that given the verbiage Herbert spent on writing about how invested Paul was to find a way to avoid the jihad and human extinction, and that he did implement a plan to destroy it and used that ready capability as a threat to coerce his opponents, then we should be able to safely assume that if destroying the spice could have avoided those things that he would have seen that and done so.
But, I do think that story could have been a good one too, maybe even better.
Herbert's messaging in the Dune novels is not really a warning about heroes / charismatic leaders directly, IMO, but in believing that our stories about them correspond with reality. Our stories about them tend to be fantastical with respect to human behavior, singly and in societies, in the same way that science fiction stories are fantastical about technology. In other words, detached from reality. To me the human society in the Dune stories is so unbelievable that it is hard to suspend my disbelief. It's a caricature intended to pound home the truth that when people with great power (charismatic leaders) act there will be suffering and death regardless of intentions or whether they are good guys or bad guys. In real life there is no such thing as Campbellian Heroes.
@scidata:
"Try, or try not. There is no catch."
Der Oger,
You asked me how you fight systemic injustice other than through DEI.
Let's first start with the fundamental problem with DEI: it was ALWAYS a short-term strategy. Over the long-term, DEI is toxic.
Why is that?
Beacuse, DEI...or the original concept known as "affirmative action," only truly functions to break down a complete barrier that marginalizes disfavored groups. It isn't something that breaks them down over the long term.
The reason is quite simple: because DEI is a tool oligarchs use to exert control. In short, DEI yeilds nothing but illusory "progress."
Why? Because it doesn't touch what truly matters to oligarchs, which is the power and privilege wealth creates. Oligarchs really don't care about racism, sexism or religious/cultural beliefs. At their core, the ONE thing that unifies oligarchs is preserving the prerogatives that tycoon level wealth brings.
That is what matters.
DEI exists so that the pleb fight each other over culture war crap that doesn't really matter to oligarchs. That way, the masses fight one anther rather than unify against the oligarchs. In an ideal world, culture war "victories" make some disfavored groups think they're better off.
And, indeed, disfavored groups can even make big gains with culture war wins. This is fine as far as oligarchs are concerned. While the plebs fight one another, the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. THAT is what matters to oligarchs.
So, DEI is, in fact, a tool created by, financed by, and works to the advantage of the oligarch class, not a means to fight them.
How do you fight them? Well, it's the same method that EVERY entrepreneur uses to break into the oligarch class usually from a starting position in the affluent class.
You need to understand something about the structure of society that they've missed. This method is STRUCTURAL change rather than hero-driven change. In short, it's the way Asmiov imaged psychohistory overcoming the Empire, or we see in real world examples from entrepreneurs.
Take Bill Gates for example. The way 25-year-old Gates broke into the oligarchy was out-negotiating IBM when he created DOS for the original PC. Gates understood that the identity of the product existed in the SOFTWARE, which is how the user interfaced with the machine) not the quality of the hardware (which was how IBM dominated the business machine market until introducing the PC.
That's why when Gates retained the licensing rights to DOS he clobbered IBM.
Understanding something the big players miss about culture, politics, or law is how social reformers beat the oligarchs, which mirrors how tech entrepreneurs use their superior knowledge of tech to break into the oligarch class. You beat them, by getting them to agree to something that undermines their social dominance in the long-term (they usually see short term threats).
Funny you should say that. I'm currently writing a blog post about how error handling, in general, is overrated. I've even been trying to come up with a CITOKATE adjacent term. At times, especially with Forth, bugs are your friends. They should be fixed of course, but never letting them happen, or pre-squelching their effects, is often counter-productive.
Sorry. Been way busy finishing my big AI book then in formatting hell to get it up on KDP. It's pretty much done! `Gorgeous Farley cover. Hoping the RSA folks keep their promise to buy a bunch of them.
Offering 1:3 odds Trump is using Iran as a distraction from pulling a coup in Cuba. Either way, the people will in either place will get zip.
Frank's DUNE scenarios never made a lick of sense. I got an impression that was intentional.
JV the last thing lefties want to contemplate is "what if we succeed?" And equal opportunity is assumed and today's radicals are viewed like John Brown. As violent maniacs who happened to to aim their mania is the right overall direction, but did little to advance it.
The 'power' of hydraulic despots did not extend to protecting their OWN thrones and harems from other kings or from upstart usurpers.
DEI is not "favouritism" - quite the opposite!
Favouritism is the unqualified white dude getting the job - which is exactly what we see with the current admin
DEI however HAS been a major drag on progress when it has been VISIBLY taken over by "Absolutists" - people who will admit no argument -
Not so much in the political sphere but in industry and especially in education
Those plonkers have enabled the right wing to weaponize "DEI" - and is a major reason that so many people stayed home in your last election leading to your present predicament
onward
onward
I never understood why destroying the spice was a credible treat. Since spice was in the very air they breathed on Arrakis, destroying the spice would doom every Fremen to a painful death by addictive withdrawal.
I read it as "destroying the spice already harvested", and that it would have killed the Navigators first - long before any Fremen had to suffer.
Also, the threats of "mutually assured destruction" and the everlooming possibility of a War in the Middle East that closes the Persian Gulf or leaves nothing than thousands of oil rigs burning.
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