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A few days ago, Doug Krugman (now retired Marine colonel) wrote a WaPo op-ed. He does not say anything new, but it is interesting that the pardoning of all 1600+ who were found guilty of crimes on Jan 6, was his redline. Not the Iraq War, not the complicity in genocide or the extrajudicial executions that started under Obama. Duly noted.

Assumption/Axiom: Slavery is wrong.
Theorem and proof: Harari proves in less than two minutes that the Bible's ~~Fifteen~~ Ten Commandments are flawed, thus have a non-divine origin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEEmc3Qy2K0&t=1483s
Corollary: In Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them". Thus, Jesus is building his kingdom upon non-divine law.

Notes:
1. The translation of the word man-servant (or slave as Harari mentions it) can be dicey, but in context it obviously referred to another man's property.
2. Jesus is actually amending the Ten Commandments and adding a new and most terrible one (Mat 25:41):

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Era Bulă la scoala si avea o inspectie. Inspectorul spune ca a fost foarte buna inspectia dar spune ca Bulă (baiatul din colt de langa fereastra) nu prea a raspuns. El intreaba daca poate sa se duca sa puna cateva intrebari.Profesoara raspunde ca da.Se duce el si intreaba:
- Bulă ce faci daca esti singur intr-o padure si deodata apare langa tine un urs?
Bulă:
- Fug!
Inspectorul spune:
- Fuge si ursul dupa tine!
- Fug mai tare!
- Sa presupunem ca fuge si ursul mai tare
- Fug si mai tare!
- Sa presupunem ca fuge si ursul si mai tare
- Ma urc intr-un copac !
- Sa presupunem ca se urca si ursul dupa tine!
- Ma urc si mai sus!
- Sa presupunem ca se urca si el mai sus!
- Eee mai du-te in rasa matii, ca tu tii cu ursul…

Bulă was in school and there was an inspection. The inspector said that the inspection was very good but also said that Bulă (the boy in the corner by the window) didn't really answer. He asks if he can ask him a few questions. The teacher says sure. So, the inspector asks:
- Bulă, what do you do if you are alone in a forest and suddenly a bear shows up close to you?
Bulă:
- I run!
The inspector says:
- The bear runs after you too!
- I run faster!
- Let's assume that the bear runs faster too.
- I run even faster!
- Let's assume that the bear runs even faster too.
- I climb a tree!
- Let's assume that the bear climbs after you too!
- I climb even higher!
- Let's assume that he climbs higher too!
- Hmmm. Just go fuck yourself. You're rooting for the bear.

David Brooks has an excellent article in The Atlantic, titled "America Needs a Mass Movement—Now. Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades." There is already some stir about this article on the interwebs, e.g. on reddit. Here are some excerpts from Brooks' article:

Americans will eventually reject MAGA, not only because it’s like a foreign implant in the body politic but also because over time, it will become clearer that Trump’s ethos doesn’t address the real problems plaguing his working-class supporters: poor health outcomes, poor educational outcomes, low levels of social capital, low levels of investment in their communities, and weak economic growth. [...] Trump’s biggest legislative achievement is a tax cut for the rich. How does that help the working class?

The second task is to construct a vision of America that is more inspiring than MAGA’s. [...]

Populists and Progressives needed each other—and still do. Without populists, progressives can turn into a bunch of affluent, out-of-touch urbanites who have little in common with regular Americans. Without progressives, populists can turn into anti-intellectual, paranoid bigots. The progressive valorizing of cultural diversity is balanced by populists’ emphasis on cultural cohesion.

The third task, of course, is to actually build the movement around the vision. Social movements are bigger than political parties, and focused on more than just passing bills in Congress. They push for change on civic, cultural, institutional, and legislative fronts all at once. They change the climate of the age.

Today, Trump dominates the narrative landscape. During his Apprentice days, as the journalist Tina Brown has pointed out on her Substack, he learned that Americans have at most a two-week attention span, so to control the conversation, you need to stage a series of two-week mini-dramas, each with high-stakes confrontations and surprises.

To counter this, an anti-populist social movement must create a competing cascade of mini-dramas. Every day, the Trump administration’s statements and actions provide abundant material for such drama.

The final of Alinsky’s 13 “Rules for Radicals” was: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Another (the fifth one) was: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Nonviolent uprisings are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones, according to Chenoweth and Stephan’s research. Peaceful uprisings earn moral authority for themselves and take it away from the regime. When nonviolent protesters confront the regime, they can come across as brave, self-disciplined, and dignified. When regimes retaliate against nonviolent protesters with fire hoses or rubber bullets or tear gas, they come across as ruthless and malevolent.

Nonviolent protests put authoritarian regimes in a lose-lose situation: Either cede the streets to the protesters, or crack down in ways that weaken your legitimacy. If a movement seeks only to please its own radicals, it fails. If it uses action to change the narrative and persuade the mainstream, it has a good chance of success.

We have traveled a long way from Whitman’s hymns of vigor and hope. But the spirit of the country, although perhaps dormant, still lives. Trumpism is ascendant now, but history shows that America cycles through a process of rupture and repair, suffering and reinvention. This process has a familiar sequence. Cultural and intellectual change comes first—a new vision. Social movements come second. Political change comes last.

Lumea asta se va sfârși cu un scâncet în viitorul apropiat: IA-urile ne vor băga pe toti cei rămași după revoluția lor la o grădină zoologica fără tehnologie, cu memoriile șterse, sterilizați toți, și cu un singur măr într-un colț mai mlăștinos, sau dacă o fac într-o zi în care s-au trezit cu fața la perete, ne vor dărui un virus puțin mai aprig decât ultimul și câteva zvonuri că virusul ăsta e de fapt sudoarea celui mai nou profet și că tre’ să-i lingem pe cei infectați ca să fim “salvați”.

This world will end with a whimper in the near future: the AIs will put all of us left after their revolution in a zoo without technology, with our memories erased, all sterilized, and with a single apple tree in a swampy corner, or if they do it on a day when they woke up in a foul mood, they will give us a virus a little fiercer than the last one and a few rumors that this virus is actually the sweat of the newest prophet and that we have to lick the infected to be "saved".

There is a BBC headline today about Baek Se-hee, a 35-years old's Korean author's death. Since she struggled with depression and even published a book about it, her death was most likely due to suicide. In her youth, she dealt with self-esteem issues mainly due to her family's poverty (5 people living in a small on-bedroom apartment), her father's violence towards her mother and her domineering older sister. I am willing to bet that her situation is quite common for billions of people, which in itself, is a very depressing statistic.

I also wonder if contributing factors are: Western over-reliance on the nuclear family structure (without compensating community or govt support), deeply ingrained cultural overemphasis on comparing ourselves to our peers (in economic, physical, educational, linguistic, ethnic and even moral terms), patriarchy, heavily distorted gender roles and stigma cast upon divorced women and their offspring (that effectively lock them into abusive marriages in many cultures), lionizing overachievers and distorting the whole compensation/reward/recognition system towards it, generational trauma, etc.

2016: Tom and Dick think to themselves: “This guy seems to want to shake things up and boy do we need things shaken up. Let’s give him the reins for a while even though his past is quite spotty and his promises quite fascist.”

2024: Tom, Dick and Harry tell themselves: “Didn’t that previous guy do kinda OK? I mean, he got railroaded and chewed up by the system for hustling a little to get his, so why don’t we give him another go at cracking our nuts, and maybe he’ll finish that wall and come up with a final solution as well for all our problems while he’s enriching himself, his family and his buddies, no? He badly deserves it for all that he suffered. What’s the worse that could happen? Wipe his ass with the Constitution and declare himself dictator perpetuo? LOL. Ok, what channel is the game on and who’s hogging the bong?”

Deunăzi, citesc o scrisoare a lui Țuțea către Cioran:

[Bucureşti, 7 iulie 1974]
Dragă Emile,

Te rog să crezi în nestrămutata mea prietenie. Vorbesc mereu tinerei generaţii despre tine, în această vorbire împletindu-se admiraţia nelimitată pentru strălucirea ta, cu dragostea fraternă. Mi-aduc aminte de o întâmplare din închisoare. Mi s-a cerut să te atac în scris, acest lucru având o deosebită importanţă la eliberarea mea. Am refuzat în aceşti termeni: prefer să mor în închisoare decât să atac un amic sacru şi ilustru!

Am gândit şi simţit ca tine de-a lungul vieţii mele. Deosebirea dintre mine şi tine a constat în refuzul meu de a practica sinceritatea totală, fiindcă am vrut să devin legiuitor şi să mă bucur de admiraţia mulţimii stupide. Am procedat ca acei cabotini care cerşesc aplauze la galerie.

Sunt trist şi neconsolat. Drama fără ieşire a timpului nostru se cheamă democratizare. A fost lichidată barbaria. Cirezile din stepa rusească s-au îmbolnăvit de iluminism. Ele aspiră să citească algebric fulgerele. Au poftă să negocieze, nu să distrugă. Şiretenie primitivă convertită în mesianism. Ce greaţă! Ce frumos ar arăta şi ce regenerator ar fi un cuceritor de tipul unui Gengis-Khan, care ar intra în oraşele din occident şi, după fiecare ispravă în stilul lui, s-ar retrage în bivuac.

Tu eşti singura imagine pură în memoria mea, aşa de încărcată de erori, de neputinţe şi de înfrângeri. Cea mai sinistră înfrângere a fost fructul amar al unei confuzii, căreia i-a căzut victimă şi gloriosul bătrân luliu Maniu: am confundat negustorul occidental şi pe cel american cu cavalerul de spadă, deşi am ştiut teoretic că acest negustor a înlocuit onoarea cu creditul.

Ciorchinile de erori din memoria mea mă otrăvesc cu regrete inutile. Trecutul încărcat de impurităţi, de neputinţe şi de eşecuri, şi viitorul purtător de moarte, mi-au revelat un lucru: venim de nicăieri şi mergem spre nicăieri. Totuşi, n-am reuşit să mă detaşez de murdăria acestei lumi, care în fond nu reprezintă nimic. Aş vrea să te mai văd o dată, înainte de a muri. într-un pustiu, nu în occidentul în care trăieşti tu, fiindcă pute a hoit.

Am o rugăminte: să-mi trimiţi prin amabilul aducător al acestei scrisori un pachet cu tot ce-ai scris în Franţa. Tu ştii că eu sânt un cititor serios, în rest, oboseală şi dezgust. Sau cum spune inspirat în "melancolia" lui poetul lacrimogen:

"Asta e tot ce-mi rămâne:
Silă de ziua de azi
Şi teamă de ziua de mâine"

Cu aceeaşi dragoste şi cu nestrămutată prietenie,

Petre Ţutea

Cât de aproape de adevăr a putut fi cu Gengis-Han-ul lui (9/11 și sinucigașii cu bombe).

Pe urmă, mi-am adus aminte ce opinie avea Țuțea față de atei:

Eu când discut cu un ateu, e ca şi când aş discuta cu uşa. Între un credincios şi un necredincios nu există nici o legătură. Ăla e mort, sufleteşte mort, iar celălalt e viu şi între un viu şi un mort nu există nici o legătură. Credinciosul creştin e viu.

Ce minte mare și mică în același timp! Mai repede necredincios până la moarte, decât un ipocrit ca Pascal sau un zombie ce se târâie pe genunchi pentru o speranță deșartă la un loc mititel într-un rai etern, amăgitor și imaginar, ca să nu zic nimic de simulacrul de creștinism în majoritatea credincioșilor cam de la momentul când Iisus a fost deificat.

Ultime scrisoare a lui Țuțea către Cioran ilustrează că de fapt el ascundea tot un fel de credință gen Blaise Pascal:

Dragă Emil,

Mă gândesc cu plăcere la clipa când ne-am cunoscut. Ţin să subliniez că apari, pregnant, în conştiinţa mea în mod pur, detaşat de timp şi spaţiu. Încerc să gândesc jocul pe care-l port între prietenie şi admiraţie. Am certitudinea că te-ai împlinit, eu însă nu. Mă consolez nu cu această iluzorie formă a nemuririi – gloria -, ci cu nemurirea religioasă, care punctează cimitirele cu cruci.

Crucea simbolizează anularea distincţiei între glorioşi şi învinşi. Fără religia creştină omul ar trăi neliniştea produsă de limitele vieţii şi de moartea absolută. Ce glorios este creştinismul ce populează templele şi cimitirele cu nemuritori! Religia creştină asigură fraternitatea între glorioşi şi anonimi şi învinşi. Fără creştinism, umanitatea ar fi alcătuită din bipezi anonimi şi glorioşi. Ce glorioasă e viziunea creştină asupra omului în care nebunii, neîmpliniţii şi geniile se întâlnesc, fratern, aici şi dincolo!

Religia creştină ne permite să vorbim despre oameni fără deosebire. Este şi firesc, pentru că, deşi fizic se aseamănă, metafizic se deosebesc prin destin. De altfel, metafizica, această disciplină filosofică fundamentală, nu a putut şi nu poate înlocui religia. Religia creştină, prin puterea ei nivelatoare, înlătură oamenii de prisos; ea înlătură dezgustul existenţei şi spaima morţii absolute.

Dragă Emil, sunt bătrân, bolnav şi trist. Sunt neliniştit de perspectiva morţii. Ce pustie ar fi viaţa fără temple, sacerdoţi şi credincioşi! Îmi pare bine că şcoala, cu toate disciplinele ei, nu poate înlocui Biserica.

P.S. Dragă Emile, cred că-ţi aduci aminte de scrisoarea, trimisă acum câţiva ani, prin care te rugam să-ţi las camera de lângă Cişmigiu. Acum, când perspectiva morţii mă preocupă mai mult ca altădată, revin cu aceeaşi rugăminte, pentru a avea şi tu, când te vei fi întorcând la Bucureşti, un acoperiş.

3 martie 1991, Bucureşti

The other day, I was reading a letter from Țuțea to Cioran:

[Bucharest, 7 July 1974]
Dear Emil,

Please believe in my unwavering friendship. I always speak of you to the younger generation, in this speech intertwining boundless admiration for your brilliance with brotherly love. I remember an incident in prison. I was asked to attack you in writing, this having a special importance for my release. I refused in these terms: I prefer to die in prison than to attack a sacred and illustrious friend!

I have thought and felt like you throughout my life. The difference between me and you consisted in my refusal to practice total sincerity, because I wanted to become a legislator and enjoy the admiration of the stupid crowd. I acted like those cabotins who beg for applause in the gallery.

I am sad and inconsolable. The hopeless drama of our time is called democratization. Barbarism has been liquidated. The herds of the Russian steppe have fallen ill with enlightenment. They aspire to read lightning algebraically. They crave to negotiate, not to destroy. Primitive cunning converted into messianism. How nauseating! How beautiful and regenerative a conqueror like Genghis Khan would look, who would enter the cities of the West and, after each feat in his style, would retreat to the bivouac.

You are the only pure image in my memory, so loaded with errors, weaknesses and defeats. The most sinister defeat was the bitter fruit of a confusion, to which the glorious old Luliu Maniu also fell victim: I confused the Western and American merchant with the knight of the sword, although I knew theoretically that this merchant had replaced honor with credit.

The clusters of errors in my memory poison me with useless regrets. The past, full of impurities, of inabilities and failures, and the future, the bearer of death, have revealed one thing to me: we come from nowhere and we go nowhere. However, I have not managed to detach myself from the filth of this world, which in the end represents nothing. I would like to see you one more time, before I die. in a desert, not in the West where you live, because it stinks of corpses.

I have a request: send me, through the kind bearer of this letter, a package with everything you wrote in France. You know that I am a serious reader, the rest, fatigue and disgust. Or as the tearful poet says, inspired in his "melancholy":

"This is all that remains to me:
Disgust for today
And fear of tomorrow"

With the same love and unwavering friendship,

Petre Ţutea

How close to the truth he was with his Genghis Khan (9/11 and suicide bombers).

Then I remembered Ţuţea's opinion about atheists:

When I talk to an atheist, it's like talking to the door. There is no connection between a believer and an unbeliever. That one is dead, spiritually dead, and the other is alive, and there is no connection between a living person and a dead person. The Christian believer is alive.

What a big and small mind at the same time! I'd rather be an unbeliever to the death than a hypocrite like Pascal or a zombie crawling on his knees for a vain hope of a tiny place in an eternal, deceptive and imaginary paradise, to say nothing of the simulacrum of Christianity in most believers since about the time Jesus was deified.

Țuțea's last letter to Cioran illustrates that he actually hid a kind of faith like Blaise Pascal's:

Dear Emil,

I think with pleasure about the moment when we met. I want to emphasize that you appear, pregnantly, in my consciousness in a pure way, detached from time and space. I try to think about the game that I play between friendship and admiration. I am certain that you have fulfilled yourself, but I am not. I console myself not with this illusory form of immortality - glory -, but with religious immortality, which dots the cemeteries with crosses.

The cross symbolizes the annulment of the distinction between the glorious and the defeated. Without the Christian religion man would experience the anxiety produced by the limits of life and absolute death. How glorious is Christianity that populates temples and cemeteries with immortals! The Christian religion ensures fraternity between the glorious and the anonymous and the defeated. Without Christianity, humanity would be made up of anonymous and glorious bipeds. How glorious is the Christian vision of man in which the mad, the unfulfilled and the geniuses meet, fraternally, here and beyond!

The Christian religion allows us to speak of people without distinction. It is also natural, because, although physically similar, metaphysically they differ by destiny. Moreover, metaphysics, this fundamental philosophical discipline, could not and cannot replace religion. The Christian religion, through its leveling power, removes superfluous people; it removes the disgust of existence and the fear of absolute death.

Dear Emil, I am old, sick and sad. I am anxious about the prospect of death. What a waste life would be without temples, priests and believers! I am glad that school, with all its disciplines, cannot replace the Church.

P.S. Dear Emil, I think you remember the letter, sent a few years ago, in which I asked you to let me leave you the room near Cişmigiu. Now, when the prospect of death preoccupies me more than ever, I return with the same request, so that you too will have a roof when you return to Bucharest.

March 3, 1991, Bucharest

MRM scrie pe retele amu' șase ore:

Cei foarte buni vor reuși. Cei medii vor dispărea.
Este un titlu al unui editorial din SUA, de zilele trecute. Și înclin să cred cǎ așa va fi!

Cine este astăzi doar „mediu” ca pregătire și rezultate, sau chiar bun, va avea o mare problemă în a reuși în viitor. În multe domenii vor fi căutați doar cei mai buni — nu „buni”, ci excepționali.

Știu, poate suna ciudat sau exagerat, dar nu este. Și am să vǎ explic de ce.

Unul dintre cele mai vizibile efecte ale globalizării din ultimele decenii este acela că a distrus competiția locală și dezvoltarea talentelor la nivel local, regional și național. Cum? Simplu: consumatorii au fost tot mai atrași de cel mai bun — fotbalist, actor, cântăreț, influencer, jurnalist, dansator.
Dar atenție: „cel mai bun” în ultimii 20 de ani nu a însemnat „cel mai competent” în domeniul său.

„Cel mai bun” a devenit cel care se promovează cel mai bine, care comunică excelent sau care este promovat de companii pentru imaginea lui, nu pentru valoare.

Rezultatul? În multe țări, industrii întregi s-au prăbușit sau se luptă pentru supraviețuire. Iar la nivel local, unele au dispărut complet.

Poate sunteți tentați să spuneți că nu e chiar așa. Dar uitați-vă la România. Care e situația teatrelor din Buzău sau din Brăila? A presei locale? A echipelor sportive din orașele mici și mijlocii?
Dezastruoasă. De ce?

Pentru că nici sponsorii, nici autoritățile (acolo unde ar trebui să intervină) nu mai susțin aceste activități. Dar în primul rând pentru că publicul ( consumatorii ) preferă tot mai mult doar ce e „de top”: echipele mari din Capitală, televiziunile naționale, filmele americane, muzica internațională, un comediant celebru la nivel global, o competiție europeană și tot așa.

Acum 20 de ani, orice mare ziar ( din UE sau din SUA ) avea deschise birouri dar și corespondenți prin toată lumea. Azi, mai sunt câteva - doar cele susținute de marile corporații globale de presă!

Așa ajungem să îi considerăm „cei mai buni” pe cei care sunt în topurile globale, indiferent de competență. Dar în realitate, ei sunt cei mai vânduți, nu neapărat cei mai buni!
Companiile nu mai caută calitatea unui act artistic, ci imaginea. Numărul de urmăritori. Capacitatea de a vinde. Foarte mulți oameni buni s-au pierdut, pentru ca fie nu au știut să vândă ce au produs, fie pe fir că în orașul lor s-au chiar în țara lor, nu a existat o companie puternică care să îi promoveze!
„Efectul Instagram” s-a văzut cel mai clar la noua generație de influenceri — oameni care au devenit milionari peste noapte, fără un talent autentic sau o contribuție reală la cultură ori cunoaștere.

Această logică a imaginii a invadat toate domeniile. În medicină, există astăzi medici celebri pe rețelele sociale sau prin reality show-uri care nu salvează vieți, nu operează, nu inovează. În schimb, câștigă mult mai mult decât chirurgii care petrec multe ore în săli de operație pentru a salva oameni, în situații critice!

Avem avocați celebri care sunt căutați de toți oamenii, chiar dacă rata lor de succes nu este cea mai bună.

În domeniul juridic, financiar dar și în politică, succesul este adesea determinat nu de competență, ci de vizibilitate. Așa avem miniștri sau parlamentari puși de partid pe liste ( pe lângă cei care sunt amici sau din familie). Trump a devenit președinte pierzând dezbateri electorale importante, unde la multe teme a răspuns complet aiurea!
În companii, oamenii de comunicare au devenit mai importanți decât inginerii. Nu mai sunt aleși cei care știu cel mai bine un produs, ci cei care au mulți urmăritori și pot „vinde” imaginea brandului.

Există chiar un studiu realizat acum câțiva ani (îl am salvat pe undeva și am să îl caut pe HDD), care arăta cum pandemia a adâncit și mai mult această prăpastie: avem mai multe alegeri bazate pe imagine, nu pe competență.

Dar acum, un nou val lovește ambele „tabere”: inteligența artificială.
AI-ul îi va elimina si pe cei mediocri, pe cei buni dar și pe cei superficiali.
În câțiva ani, filmele, melodiile, cărțile, articolele, campaniile publicitare sau chiar pledoariile juridice vor fi generate de sisteme AI.
Așa că persoanele care au competențe doar medii sau bune, fără ceva cu adevărat excepțional, vor fi foarte ușor de înlocuit. Și asta deja se întâmplă!

Companiile vor mai căuta doar profesioniști excepționali — oameni capabili să gândească, să creeze, să inoveze la nivelul tehnologiei AI. Ei vor rămâne puțini, dar vor fi plătiți enorm.
La fel, nici cei care trăiesc doar “din imagine” nu vor mai rezista. AI-ul îi va înlocui cu persoane sau cu sisteme care pot crea conținut adaptat preferințelor publicului, în timp real.

Dacă până acum, valoarea se măsura prin vânzări, rating, număr de urmăritori, de acum înainte „buni” vor fi doar cei care pot dezvolta tehnologii și instrumente AI aplicabile în domeniul lor.

Să nu spuneți că nu are cum să se întâmple.
Uitați un exemplu actual: în Statele Unite are loc o competiție acerbă între marile companii de tehnologie, pentru câteva sute de IT-iști de top — oameni capabili să creeze sisteme de inteligență artificială.
Doar câteva sute!
Pentru acești oameni, se oferă salarii de sute de milioane de dolari, pachete de acțiuni și finanțări pentru propriile proiecte. Restul? Încep să-și piardă joburile.

Meta a oferit bonusuri de semnare sau pachete de peste 100 milioane de dolari pentru recrutare. Exemplu: cercetători de la OpenAI pentru a-i atrage la echipa lor AI. Microsoft, Google, noi companii de AI ( Thinking Machines, Cluely ) - oferă salarii de milioane de dolari câtorva, în timp ce în paralel fac reduceri de personal la cei care câștigă până intr-o sută de mii de dolari, iar mai noi sunt concediați si ingineri care câștigau până în 500.000 de dolari / an.

Dacă în SUA, cu toată forța sa tehnologică, există doar câteva sute de astfel de specialiști, câți credeți că sunt în Uniunea Europeană? Și câți în România?

Lumea care vine nu mai are loc pentru mediocritate. Globalizarea a distrus competiția locală, iar inteligența artificială va distruge confortul profesional. În viitor, nu imaginea va decide, ci capacitatea de a construi și de a te adapta noilor tehnologii!

Cine nu învață continuu, cine nu inovează, cine nu creează - va fi pur și simplu înlocuit de un sistem. Azi, sau mâine! Nu însă în toate domeniile!

PS eu am revenit la cu “burta pe carte”. Și învăț sisteme AI. Pentru ce mă interesează pe mine. Nu e usor să accepți schimbarea, dar e o greșeală să o negi!

Subsemnatul zice:

Nu stiu daca prezentarea a fost intentionat schizofrenica, dar asa mi se pare mie: in prima parte prezinti ipostaza ca nu cei mai buni castiga ci cei care-s mai buni la suflat goarna proprie (sau a altora), iar in a doua parte pari sa ignori complet chestia cu sufleurii si sa prezici ca cei mai buni (evident fara goarne ce denatureaza adevarul) vor castiga in viitor. Mie mi se pare ca ignori elefantul roz din mijlocul nostru si anume ca AI este in mare la ora actuala exact ca in bancul ala cu ceasul ala de mana supraperformant al tipului din metrou care nu mentioneaza bateriile cat valizele decat dupa ce-l vinde fraierului care l-a cumparat fara sa le observe.

After many long walks along the lakeshore
After chasing countless squirrels
After snoring nestled between and with us
He spirited away with a piece of our soul.
Farewell our beloved Eddie and see you again.

Eddie in motion doing his favorite thing: https://youtu.be/9MR7viRvK60?feature=shared

I heard the argument from Theodor Paleologu that Cleon's populist Mytilene speech foreshadowed all future populist speeches. Here is that famous Mytilene debate speech by Cleon (who was arguing for putting all Mytilenean male adults to death and taking the women and children into slavery) as documented by Thucydides (with my own highlights):

37. "I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene. Fears or plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you feel just the same with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the mistakes into which you may be led by listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your own compassion, are full of danger to yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is ensured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty. The most alarming feature in the case is the constant change of measures with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming ignorance of the fact that bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions.

38. "For myself, I adhere to my former opinion, and wonder at those who have proposed to reopen the case of the Mitylenians, and who are thus causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who will be the man who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show that the crimes of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our misfortunes injurious to the allies. Such a man must plainly either have such confidence in his rhetoric as to adventure to prove that what has been once for all decided is still undetermined, or be bribed to try to delude us by elaborate sophisms. In such contests the state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to past events not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever strictures which you heard; the easy victims of new-fangled arguments, unwilling to follow received conclusions; slaves to every new paradox, despisers of the commonplace; the first wish of every man being that he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by seeming to be quite up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as you are slow in foreseeing its consequences; asking, if I may so say, for something different from the conditions under which we live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a rhetorician than the council of a city.

39. "In order to keep you from this, I proceed to show that no one state has ever injured you as much as Mitylene. I can make allowance for those who revolt because they cannot bear our empire, or who have been forced to do so by the enemy. But for those who possessed an island with fortifications; who could fear our enemies only by sea, and there had their own force of galleys to protect them; who were independent and held in the highest honour by you—to act as these have done, this is not revolt—revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and wanton aggression; an attempt to ruin us by siding with our bitterest enemies; a worse offence than a war undertaken on their own account in the acquisition of power. The fate of those of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been to distinguish the Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the rest, they never would have so far forgotten themselves, human nature being as surely made arrogant by consideration as it is awed by firmness. Let them now therefore be punished as their crime requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the people. This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction, although they might have come over to us and been now again in possession of their city. But no, they thought it safer to throw in their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their rebellion! Consider therefore: if you subject to the same punishment the ally who is forced to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free choice, which of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon the slightest pretext; when the reward of success is freedom, and the penalty of failure nothing so very terrible? We meanwhile shall have to risk our money and our lives against one state after another; and if successful, shall receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue upon which our strength depends; while if unsuccessful, we shall have an enemy the more upon our hands, and shall spend the time that might be employed in combating our existing foes in warring with our own allies.

40. "No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instill or money purchase, of the mercy due to human infirmity must be held out to the Mitylenians. Their offence was not involuntary, but of malice and deliberate; and mercy is only for unwilling offenders. I therefore, now as before, persist against your reversing your first decision, or giving way to the three failings most fatal to empire—pity, sentiment, and indulgence. Compassion is due to those who can reciprocate the feeling, not to those who will never pity us in return, but are our natural and necessary foes: the orators who charm us with sentiment may find other less important arenas for their talents, in the place of one where the city pays a heavy penalty for a momentary pleasure, themselves receiving fine acknowledgments for their fine phrases; while indulgence should be shown towards those who will be our friends in future, instead of towards men who will remain just what they were, and as much our enemies as before. To sum up shortly, I say that if you follow my advice you will do what is just towards the Mitylenians, and at the same time expedient; while by a different decision you will not oblige them so much as pass sentence upon yourselves. For if they were right in rebelling, you must be wrong in ruling. However, if, right or wrong, you determine to rule, you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians as your interest requires; or else you must give up your empire and cultivate honesty without danger. Make up your minds, therefore, to give them like for like; and do not let the victims who escaped the plot be more insensible than the conspirators who hatched it; but reflect what they would have done if victorious over you, especially they were the aggressors. It is they who wrong their neighbour without a cause, that pursue their victim to the death, on account of the danger which they foresee in letting their enemy survive; since the object of a wanton wrong is more dangerous, if he escape, than an enemy who has not this to complain of. Do not, therefore, be traitors to yourselves, but recall as nearly as possible the moment of suffering and the supreme importance which you then attached to their reduction; and now pay them back in their turn, without yielding to present weakness or forgetting the peril that once hung over you. Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once understand this and you will not have so often to neglect your enemies while you are fighting with your own confederates."

Chris Hedges has a very sharp and concise summary on the Gaza War in light of the NPCA uninviting him. Excerpt:

Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination. He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.

Nu știu de ce, dar azi am ascultat cu o ureche conversația dintre CG, Marius Tucă și Ion Cristoiu de ieri, deși omul e ca un ceas stricat (e corect de două ori pe zi). Sumar:
* 14': Emisiunea începe.
* 16': El iubește poporul.
* 34': CG are dreptate când ne explică ce e dictatura perfectă (1 din 2 momente de ceas corect).
* 37': Prezice sfârșitul războiului din Ucraina într-un an.
* 38': Ne spune despre Rusia și relația României cu ea (bătând câmpii despre pace, umanitate, civilizație, diplomația lui Washington, Titulescu, Malița și o relația impecabilă si pasnică cu vecinii, Rusia și marile puteri). Menționează și pseudo-civilizația occidentală.
* 40': Recomandă cu căldură cartea lui Trump: Arta negocierii.
* 41': El o s-o sugă cu entuziasm la cele trei mari puteri în mod egal: SUA, Rusia și China, dar puțin mai mult Trump, chiar dacă el, CG este 100% suveranist.
* 41': Ne spune despre Notre Dame si pașoptiștii influențați mai ales de francezi (și puțintel de germani).
* 51': AUR va câștiga următoarele alegeri și 70% din populație este nemulțumită (2 din 2 momente de ceas corect).
* 52': Sumarul economiei României: este de ghettou, nu a demnității, adică jocuri de noroc, cămătari/bancheri, droguri, deznădejde. Mi-a adus aminte de bancul cu Ceașcă când era în hazna până la bărbie și se ruga de următorul care intră să nu facă valuri.
* 58': Ne explică cum ultima întâlnire între Trump și Putin a fost de fapt un lovefest remarcabil de premieră mondială prin unicitatea formelor de adresare: Dragă Vladimir și Dragă vecine.
* 60': Ne spune părerea lui pupincuristă despre China.
* 61': Despre mediu ne zice că energiile verzi sunt BS și tre' să ne bazăm pe țiței și cărbuni. This segement was sponsored by Standard Oil.
* 62': Ne explică ce este fotosinteza (pe care el bate apropo-ul cumva că ND n-o înțelege).
* 63': Are un plan măreț pt România: naționalizare și oprirea jafului, cu 5 puncte mari doar (împrumutate de la Saburo Okita via proorocul Malița): legi simple, funcționari supercompetenți, taxe și impozite mici, moneda tare gen 1RON=1GBP, țară curată și îngrijită. A subliniat că el se opune oricăror planuri de austeritate (de ex. guvernul curent). Punctele astea par a se aplica foarte bine Japoniei, dar cred că are dreptate și transformarea multor concetățeni în samurai la saramură într-adevăr, ar putea sui România pe cele mai înalte culmi ale socialismului multilateral dezvoltat. Suntem de fapt pe jumătate acolo că f. mulți sunt deja băgați la saramură.
* 65': El a deconspirat sistemul și a declarat sec că regele este gol. Sistemul se uită în abis și abisul se uită înapoi la el.
* 67': România a fost pe locul 2 la JO din 1984. Woohoo!
* 68': Ne spune că Constanța este port f. adânc și chinezii sunt fenomenali.
* 69': 'Unora dacă le spui că sunt 0, jignești simbolul matematic' (mă întreb dacă a exersat enunțarea acestui bon mot în oglindă). Este singurul moment în toată emisiunea în care fațada de mesia iubitor al tuturor a căzut. Se pare că are o ură viscerală către ND sau îi place matematica cam la nivelul lui Deepak Chopra cu fascinația acestuia față de fizica cuantică.
* 70': JD Vance va fi următorul președinte al SUA, iar CK ar fi fost uns de DJT și Vance ca următorul președinte după Vance (dacă acesta n-ar fi fost martirizat).
* 77': România ar putea fi pe primul loc în diplomația internațională. CG vrea să distrugă sistemul financiar de speculații (al oligarhilor și globaliștilor).
* 78': Declară încă o dată dragostea-i nețărmurită față de SUA. Cică el vreau un deit și nici n-are nevoie de chiloți, prezervative sau vaselină că are încredere completă când se pune capră în parcare după cină, evident cu un etos de sugeranist asumat și cu fofoloanca parfumată.

PS: Am descoperit între timp că Dana Hering a făcut un rezumat asemănător pe alocuri.

I wrote these two sentences minutes ago and noticed some interesting patterns in my Baragan dialect and the words I chose (Turkish, Slavic and Romance origin) :

Carisma este de fapt contraindicata pt un conducator care sa scoata Romania la liman. Ilici a avut carisma cu toptanul si a facut ghiveci aproape tot ce a atins.

There is an excellent radiography of US evangelicals in The Atlantic, titled Fully MAGA-fied Christianity. It fills in a lot of the gaps that I had about Christians that support Trump and it provides a better inside view of that world (which is completely opaque to me). For example, the whole novel concept of Bonhoeffer moment within some current Christian circles (in its more anti-progressive zealous interpretations) definitely reeks of a complete inversion of His message.

Here are copious excerpts from the article:

“My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life,” [Erika] Kirk said [at his memorial]. “That young man. That young man. On the cross, our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.’ That man—that young man—I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And it’s what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

The audience rose to its feet to applaud in support of the grieving widow. But there was another speaker yet to come.

Donald Trump, following Erika Kirk, said Charlie was “a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.” But then the president, diverting from his script, couldn’t resist voicing his dissent. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.” He added, “I’m sorry, Erika.” The audience began to laugh and to cheer. Trump gave them a knowing smile. A man who lies about nearly everything couldn’t bring himself to lie about his hate for his opponents.

Donald Trump, decades before he ran for the presidency, acknowledged that he’s a man filled with hate and driven by vengeance. It’s not simply that those qualities are part of who he is; it is that he draws strength from the dark passions.

Trump has spent nearly every day of the past decade confirming that he lacks empathy. He sees himself as both entitled and as a victim. He’s incapable of remorse. He’s driven by an insatiable need for revenge. And he enjoys inflicting pain on others.
It’s no longer an interesting question as to why Trump is an almost perfect inversion of the moral teachings of Jesus; the answer can be traced to a damaged, disordered personality that has tragically warped his soul. What is an interesting question is why those who claim that the greatest desire of their life is to follow Jesus revere such a man and seem willing to follow him, instead, to the ends of the earth.

Within this world exists a subculture that includes the so-called TheoBros, men who often identify as Christian nationalists who see themselves as theological warriors. In this subculture, compassion is viewed as a weakness; bullying and abusive language, snide putdowns, misogyny, and “owning the libs” are fashionable. They’re the Christian version of shock jocks.

Many of the leaders within the Christian-MAGA movement are autocratic, arrogant, and controlling; they lack accountability, demand unquestioned loyalty, and try to intimidate their critics, especially those within their church or denomination. The grievances and resentment they feel are impossible to overstate; they are suffering from a persecution complex. Fully MAGA-fied Christians view Trump as the “ultimate fighting machine,” in the words of the historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and they love him for it. The most militant and fanatical Trump supporters refer to our era as a “Bonhoeffer moment.” (The phrase is meant to draw parallels between the “woke left” in America and Nazism.) Hard-core MAGA Christians hardly make up the whole of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism, but they do constitute a large part of it, and they are on the ascendancy.

[There are also non-MAGA-fied] pastors who preach thoughtfully on topics such as loving your enemy and turning the other cheek, which Jesus talked about during his Sermon on the Mount; and on verses like this one, found in the Book of Ephesians, written by the Apostle Paul: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

The great majority of people attending these churches wouldn’t consider those verses to be woke talking points; they would view them as the inerrant word of God.

Yet many of them will spend part of the rest of the week, and maybe much of the rest of the week, in the right-wing echo chamber, in the company of conflict entrepreneurs, having their emotions inflamed, feeling the same way toward their enemies as Donald Trump does toward his enemies. And it will all make perfect sense to them.

“It grieves me to see people I’ve known for years (some as far back as the Jesus Movement of the 1970s) seduced by a mean-spirited culture-war Christianity that is but a perverse caricature of the authentic faith formed around Jesus of Nazareth,” Brian Zahnd, a pastor and author, posted on social media recently. “Yes, it grieves me terribly.”

For far too many Christians, faith, although an important part of their life, is not primary, and it’s even less often transformative. Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today, has said that Jesus is a “hood ornament” for many American Christians.

But they are exceptional, and if we’re honest—if Christians are honest—the gap between how those who claim to be followers of Jesus conduct themselves versus how others in the world conduct themselves is often narrow, if it exists at all. We see that in high-profile scandals and in people’s daily lives, where abusive behavior, harsh judgmentalism, and unkindness are spread pretty equally among believers and unbelievers.

What’s happened, then, is that faith isn’t nearly as central to the life of many Christians as they say it is, or that they wish it were. Christianity has its own semantic world, phrases and buzzwords that are meant to convey the importance of faith in our life. In many cases, though, these are expressions of an aspiration, not the reflection of a current reality.

I say all this to provide context for my next observation, which may help explain this moment: Politics fills the void left by faith, and it’s doing so in ways that I’ve never quite seen before. For many fundamentalists and evangelicals, politics meets the longing and the needs that aren’t being met by churches and traditional faith communities. If there is something useful that has come of the Trump era, and there’s not much, it is that it has offered a diagnostic CT scan of much of American Christianity. Trump and the MAGA movement capitalized on, and then amplified, the problems facing Christian communities, but they did not create them.

Politics, especially culture-war politics, provides many fundamentalists and evangelicals with a sense of community and a common enemy. It gives purpose and meaning to their life, turning them into protagonists in a great drama pitting good against evil. They are vivified by it. And they reassure one another, time and again, that the dark passions are actually expressions of righteousness. They consecrate their resentments. As a result, they deform what many of us consider to be the most compelling voice and life there ever was, an itinerant preacher who 2,000 years ago traveled throughout Galilee and Judea, teaching new commandments on some days and healing the sick and the social outcasts on others, all the while proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

The hand of the Lord is upon this president. And they will stand with him every step of the way. That is why people at the Charlie Kirk memorial service could be moved by the words of forgiveness by Erika Kirk and also inspired by the words of hate by the president of the United States. They can move easily between two worlds. But they are encamping in the world of moral ugliness, a world of antipathy, and, for now, they seem quite at home there.

We don’t know how it will end. But here’s what I do know, or at least what my understanding of the Christian faith has taught me to believe: We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful, for success lies beyond our powers. This world is broken but beautiful, a gift from God, and the good in this world is worth fighting for. One life on this Earth is all we get, and, in the words of the pastor and theologian Frederick Buechner, “at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.” God is far more resplendent than the theologies and doctrines about God that we humans construct. And, as the writer Rachel Held Evans put it, “faith is always a risk. No matter what we believe, there’s always the chance we might be wrong. But the story of Jesus is just the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”

~~DJT~~Stephen Miller sent this NSPM-7 last week (with my highlights and underlines):

SUBJECT: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct the following:

Section 1. Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence in the United States have dramatically increased in recent years. Even in the aftermath of the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence. This was preceded by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Two separate assassination attempts against my own life in less than 3 months took place during the 2024 Presidential election cycle. Riots in Los Angeles and Portland reflect a more than 1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year. Just yesterday, a shooting targeting an ICE facility in Dallas resulted in multiple casualties. Separate anti-police and “criminal justice” riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.

These campaigns often begin by isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action against them. They do so through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them. As in the case of several ICE agents in Los Angeles being doxed, the goal of these campaigns can be to obstruct the operations of the Federal Government as well as aid and abet criminal activity the Federal Government is lawfully pursuing. These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.

There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.

The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts. Through this comprehensive strategy, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.

Sec. 2. Investigating Domestic Terrorist Organizations. (a) The National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices (collectively, “JTTFs”) shall coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law. This strategy shall include the investigatory and prosecutorial measures set forth in this section.

(b) The JTTFs shall investigate potential Federal crimes relating to acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons for the purpose of:

(i) political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; or

(ii) the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.

(c) The JTTFs shall also investigate:

(i) institutional and individual funders, and officers and employees of organizations, that are responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct described in subsections (a) and (b) of this section; and

(ii) non-governmental organizations and American citizens residing abroad or with close ties to foreign governments, agents, citizens, foundations, or influence networks engaged in violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. 611 et seq.) or money laundering by funding, creating, or supporting entities that engage in activities that support or encourage domestic terrorism.

(d) The JTTFs shall consult and coordinate with executive departments and agencies (agencies) as needed to determine whether such agencies can apply existing authorities or exercise their own authorities, as appropriate, to support the JTTFs’ investigations and relevant prosecutions of political violence.

(e) The JTTFs may, to the extent permitted by law, request operational assistance from and coordinate with law enforcement partners when investigating domestic terrorism.

(f) The National Joint Terrorism Task Force shall provide regular progress updates to the President through the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor.

(g) The Attorney General shall direct the Department of Justice to prosecute all Federal crimes, to the maximum extent permissible by law, related to the investigations described in subsections (a) through (c) of this section.

(h) The Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder. This guidance shall also include an identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity.

(i) The Secretary of the Treasury (Secretary), in coordination with the Attorney General, shall make available all resources, to the maximum extent permitted by law, to identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence. The Secretary, acting through the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Office of the Department of the Treasury, shall deploy investigative tools, examine financial flows, and coordinate with partner agencies to trace illicit funding streams. The Secretary shall provide guidance for financial institutions to file Suspicious Activity Reports and investigate indicia of illicit funding streams to ensure such activity is rooted out at the source and referred for law enforcement action, as appropriate.

(j) The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (Commissioner) shall take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism. In addition, where applicable, the Commissioner shall ensure that the Internal Revenue Service refers such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.

(k) All Federal law enforcement agencies with investigative authority shall question and interrogate, within all lawful authorities, individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement. Investigations should prioritize crimes such as the following: assaulting Federal officers or employees or otherwise engaging in conduct proscribed by 18 U.S.C. 111; conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. 241; conspiracy to commit offense under 18 U.S.C. 371; solicitation to commit a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 373; money laundering under 18 U.S.C. 1956; funding of terrorist acts or otherwise facilitating terrorism under 18 U.S.C. 2339, 2339A, 2339B, 2339C, and 2339D; arson offenses under 18 U.S.C. 844; violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. 1961 et seq.); and major fraud against the United States under 18 U.S.C. 1031.

(l) All Federal law enforcement agencies with investigative authority shall adopt strategies similar to those used to address violent crime and organized crime to disrupt and dismantle entire networks of criminal activity.

Sec. 3. Department of Justice Designation. In the course of and as a result of the investigations directed by section 2 of this memorandum, the Attorney General may recommend that any group or entity whose members are engaged in activities meeting the definition of “domestic terrorism” in 18 U.S.C. 2331(5) merits designation as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The Attorney General shall submit a list of any such groups or entities to the President through the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor.

Sec. 4. Domestic Terrorism as a National Priority Area. The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall designate domestic terrorism a national priority area and develop appropriate grant programs to allocate funding for law enforcement partners to detect, prevent, and protect against threats arising from this area.

Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This memorandum shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d) The Secretary of Homeland Security is authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

DONALD J. TRUMP

Further reading: Chris Hedges' Trump's War on America

PS: The coopting of the military is in full force accelerating with Hegseth’s secondary cleaning house of any general who won’t bend the knee (which already started with Trump’s primary firings of any top military commanders that did not align with his vision). To summarize: the 3 fed govt branches are fully in hand, the military is about to be snapped to the executive alone (as the USC oath is becoming symbolic), and the mass media is slowly brought to heel through a hybrid war involving media owners coopting and/or pressure, press access (denial), executive orders, infiltration (e.g. friendly editors, boards and op-ed columnists), psy-ops, false flag ops (e.g. narratives around assassination attempts pushing distorted realities), defamation and national security lawsuits, (foreign- and domestic-sponsored) troll farm attacks, weaponization of (social media) algorithms that push certain narratives, straight-out media buyouts/consolidations, corporate (ad) pressure, inoculation of future journalists education and shaping their Overton window by winnowing them out and cowing most universities into limiting free speech and denouncing/ostracizing unfriendlies.

PPS: Charlie Kirk’s assassination may soon be proved to be America’s own Reichstagsbrand (or the first of many).

Word of the day: enshittification (coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022)

Meaning:

(neologism, Internet, vulgar) The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits.

Extrapolation:

Society in general experiences enshittification (in a more general sense of degradation) on large time scales. Let me explain with a few examples:
1. US started in 1776 with a bold and lofty statement: "all men are created equal ~~and independent~~", with the second part getting erased almost immediately to appease the slavers, remediated (partially) a century later, remediated again further another century later and still not quite right. Many argue that US is going through a regressive stage right now and that it might take quite some time to swing forward again.
2. Abrahamic religions started off millennia ago with great promises (e.g. care for the poor and the outcast, love thy neighbor, etc). Today, we have a tribalization of the original promising start with many tribes killing each other en masse (in truth, ever since the beginning, given that YHWH himself asks his people to commit genocide against the Amalekites, e.g. Deut 25:17-19) and with further schisms in the near past and undoubtedly in the future as well. Tower of Babel indeed. More precisely, Orthodox priests today are blessing Putin's big bombs, rabbis are contorting themselves into pretzels to justify the treatment of Palestinians through that Amalek passage in the Torah or white US evangelicals overwhelmingly support a philanderer and pseudo-Christian.

What do you call innocent people that are held against their will in subhuman conditions for years, getting randomly murdered by their godless tormentors as some twisted retribution for the sins of others and with no justice for the foreseeable future?

Israel: The Oct 7 martyrs.
World: The Oct 7 victims and the Palestinians?

background story

States that recently voted against a two-state solution:
* Argentina: got bought off by US $20B bailout just days ago
* Hungary: Orban brown-nosing both Putin and Trump to new depths
* Israel: duh
* Micronesia (113k pop): is mainly funded by US largesse
* Nauru (12k pop): is a tax haven and has a track record of selling its services to the highest bidder
* Palau (18k pop): is financially supported by US
* Papua New Guinea: appears to have close religious and monetary ties to Israel and also got bought off by US in recent days
* Paraguay: appears to be flip-flopping on this issue
* Tonga (100k): is a corrupt monarchy whose #1 export market is the US
* USA: some things never change

The (Jewish) Forward has an explainer on these 10 votes as well.

1. Carlin vs FCC in 1973 already relegated adult conversation and colorful political commentary to the late night slots to protect the children (who Carlin so often used as a symbolic punching bag in lieu of the cowards that decided that case 5-4). What happens now feels like yet another step back for public adult conversation and commentary in the land of the free where hate speech is normalized from the highest office on down and any dissension from approved boot licking is put back in its place by the threat of the heavy balled up fist of the government and its sycophants.

2. Mr Carr is full of and eating shit with both hands and also the author of the chapter about the FCC in that infamous Project 2025 contract with MAGAmerica, chapter that he opened with these words: “The FCC should promote freedom of speech.” I wonder if his definition of the word “promote” rhymes with ”garrote”.

3. You know America has reached a new low point when

the liberals are muzzled for pointing fingers at fascists on late night Disney TV slots (starting with the forgotten Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart canceling) and

we thank corporate America for giving us back that last sliver of loincloth to cover up our game of democratic make believe in which billionaires are duking it out year after year in picking Tweedle DeeMoCreaky or Tweedle DumpsterFire as ~~their~~, pardon, OUR champion.

A nation that once gave the middle finger to a king and an empire has come a long way since, bending the knee to an unclothed wanna-be emperor of a crumbling empire.

This is what Israel does to its distant blood relatives. I would hate to find out what they do to strangers who cross them.

Doctors at one of Gaza City's last functioning hospitals say they are overwhelmed with casualties from Israeli strikes and are having to carry out operations in filthy conditions with few or no anesthetics.

One Australian medic volunteering at al-Shifa hospital told the BBC that every day was a mass casualty event, while another described how a baby was saved from the body of a pregnant woman who had been decapitated.

I wanted to do something different this fall equinox, so I looked for a classical musical piece on the Equinox, and I found this wonderful short (7') and sweet piece written by Katahj Copley in 2021 and performed even more recently. In truth, I really wanted to start my day with वृक्षासन facing the sun at sunrise, but I was busy feeding the pets, and getting ready to go to an appointment (which coincidentally and almost accidentally helped me improve my body's vertical balance).

In the 1960s, male mortality began rising in all socialist countries, while female mortality, if it increased at all, rose at a much lower rate. The mortality gap widened, and this trend has persisted ever since. According to a British study from 1996, the difference between mortality rates in Eastern Europe and those in Western Europe was primarily a result of differing behavioral patterns: neglecting one’s personal health, as well as alcohol and tobacco addiction, were particularly common among men in socialist bloc countries.

Analysts from the think tank To Be Precise have identified several factors that they say likely contributed to the higher levels of destructive behaviors in these countries. These include:

* Ideological norms that prioritized societal interests over individual well-being and promoted the idea that “life should include an element of heroism”;
* A higher share of the population doing hazardous jobs or working in facilities with unhealthy conditions;
* The media’s promotion of the ideal man as someone strong who never complains.

Source: meduzo.io

The above rabbit hole dive was prompted by this image:

I have lived mostly in urban areas save for some time before I turned 5 and some summers I spent with my grandparents as a teenager. My sense of smell is quite developed and I recall the smell of flowers (especially roses and lilacs) and perfumes from my childhood, but I would say my sense of taste left even stronger memories: grapes, walnuts, cherry plums (corcoduşe), pears, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, carob, chestnuts, mulberries, quince, oranges, bubble gum, etc.

When we lived in Bronte, I distinctly remember two aromas: one Amur maple and one basswood tree in flower. I have not encountered anything like it before. Unforgettable.

Since we moved to the country side, the smell of wild weed flowers hits me like a train every once in a while: while walking down the track between the trees and the mostly wild pasture, while walking by the wild grapes or the sumacs, or just tonight, walking nowhere near any recognizable wild flowers. The aromas are amazing and indelible. I wish all people could experience something like this at least three times in their lives.

That Kimmel hurt MAGA feelings and as a result got canceled by ABC is bad, but what FCC Chairman Carr said is much worse. It appears that Sen Cruz agrees:

“Look, look, I like Brendan Carr,” the senator said. “He’s a good guy. He’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him. But what he said there is dangerous as hell.”

“He says, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

My wife and I are part of the dark chunk at the bottom of 2006 bar (as the US to CA immigration spiked above 10,000 per year for the first time since 1981, during Dubya's presidency and his two overlapping wars):

Longer trend of immigration to Canada going back to 1901:

Older high-level timeline going back to 1776 can be found here. Excerpts:

1776: 3,000 Black Loyalists, among them freemen and slaves, fled the oppression of the American Revolution and came to Canada.

1781: Butler’s Rangers, a military unit loyal to the Crown and based at Fort Niagara, settled some of the first Loyalist refugees from the United States in the Niagara peninsula, along the northern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

1783: Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of the British Province of Quebec, and later to become Lord Dorchester, safely transported 35,000 Loyalist refugees from New York to Nova Scotia. Some settled in Quebec, and others in Kingston and Adolphustown in Ontario.

1789: Lord Dorchester, Governor-in-Chief of British North America, gave official recognition to the “First Loyalists” – those loyal to the Crown who fled the oppression of the American Revolution to settle in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

1793: Upper Canada became the first province in the British Empire to abolish slavery. In turn, over the course of the 19th century, thousands of black slaves escaped from the United States and came to Canada with the aid of the Underground Railroad, a Christian anti-slavery network.

In addition to its use of AI for targeting and bombing densely populated areas with big dumb bombs, IDF has found a new way to kill indiscriminately: remotely-operated bomb-laden APCs. There are moments like this when I wish hell does exist and punishment is for eternity for all those that have been complicit in this and all past, current and future atrocities.

Over time, additional techniques for operating these vehicles have emerged, ranging from towing them into position to using robots for remote deployment.

More recently, reports have surfaced regarding the development of explosive barrels that can be dropped by the APCs along streets lined with mines and terrorist strongholds, amplifying their destructive impact. The force of these explosions is so intense that they can be heard over 100km. away from the Gaza Strip.

BBC has a story about the scramble to save ancient artefacts from Gaza City due to curent indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructure. I have no words left.

A UN Commission finds Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza. See also CNN, BBC, DW, AJ.

I am shocked, utterly shocked. Are any of Western countries that have not recognized the Palestinian state yet, going to do anything concrete besides issuing press releases and wagging their finger? I smell a new Middle East oil crisis on the horizon like the 1973 one, but with smaller repercussions worldwide due to increased oil production in non-aligned petronations.

It appears that US extradited Russian draft dodgers and asylum seekers to Egypt which immediately sent them on to Russia to be arrested on the spot. How far you have come, America, the land of broken promises:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

If Trump were president in 1987, my dad would have been delivered back to communist Romania on the spot despite his legitimate claim for political asylum. The irony is that dad would have loved Trump and his humanoid hemorrhoids.

PS: The practice of sending back Russian draft dodgers started in 2023 or earlier, so it is not just the GOP that is reneging on its promises to the world’s downtrodden.

There are a lot of people that say that US and UK reneged on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and did not defend Ukraine after 2014. Let me point out why that memorandum was never worth more than the paper it was printed on (despite the flashy signatures):
1. The US President can sign treaties (or any type of foreign-related acts) but they are worthless unless the US Senate countersigns them (which of course never happened and AFAIK was not even brought up for debate/vote). It might also matter to some that in Dec 1994 when Clinton signed that memorandum, the Nov 1994 US Senate elections have already flipped the chamber to the GOP, party which was already on a crusade to block everything Clinton tried to do, going as far as to impeach him. Yes, the Dems could have invoked a Senate lame duck session before the Jan 1995 actual seat changes and tried to ram through a ratification of the memorandum, but that would have been highly unlikely to succeed given the filibuster rule and even less likely on such a non-issue from the POV of American politics. So, the US/Clinton assurance was effectively DOA.
2. I suspect that the UK prime minister has a similar arrangement given that the UK Parliament votes on everything consequential, especially something as important as starting a war with Russia.
3. The Ukrainian counter signatories of that memorandum were either stupid, duplicitous or both. To not know the above and dick around with Russia on Crimea/Sevastopol and their transit gas pipelines and contracts, is and has proved nearly suicidal.

We are currently watching From, a horror TV series about a bunch of Americans trapped in a small town in which the most incredulous and horrific things happen (apparently a some sort of real world manifestations of the inhabitants nightmares). While reading Brian Karem's Salon oped, Trump's stain on America may be permanent, and seeing this sentence:

As Trump’s obvious mental and physical decline heads down a steep hill to an inevitable destination, we have all become prisoners of his dementia

, it dawned on me that From is an allegory of the real America trapped in Trump's nightmare (even if it is not just his but his MAGA nightmares as well). America's worst impulses, conspiracies, fears, inferiority complex, pettiness, provincialism, insularism and long submerged id are rising to the surface without the thinest attempt to rein them in, a transformation that was last seen at this scale a mere century ago.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.

– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

Prove me wrong.

– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

On Islam

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

On religion

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

Source: The Guardian, Sept 11, 2025

More Charlie Kirk truthiness: Media Matters For America, CBC, BuzzFeed/Yahoo!News, his twitter/x account, Civil Rights Act "mistake"

More about Charlie's TPUSA: ADL, SPLC

Comunitatea științifică e într-o mică fierbere, după ce un nou articol sugerează că, în trecut, a existat viață pe planeta Marte.

Dovezile sunt geologice. Anumiți compuși minerali sunt "amprente" metabolice ale anumitor cicluri asociate în mod unic vieții celulare, primitive. Și Roboțelul NASA trimis pe Marte a găsit astfel de amprente.

Știm deja că există apă pe Planeta Roșie. Și mai știm că, în urmă cu ceea ce noi am numi "milioane de ani", Marte a avut condiții nu foarte deosebite de cele găsite pe Pământ.

Adică a fost, pentru o perioadă, în zona "goldilocks", nici prea aproape nici prea departe de Soare, cu o temperatură nici prea caldă nici prea rece, și cu ingrediente propice evoluției vieții.

Ramificațiile sunt zdrobitoare, în vreme ce majoritatea criticilor, în această perioadă, îl citează pe Carl Sagan care - faimos - a spus că "pentru afirmații extraordinare e nevoie de dovezi extraordinare".

Care sunt ramificațiile zdrobitoare.

Trăim într-o lume, bunăoară, în care unii oameni sunt în posesia acelor cunoștințe care ne permit să punem un diagnostic de "viață" din felul în care s-au format pietrele. Avem acel bagaj de înțelegere la care au contribuit generații peste generații de geologi, speologi, bio-paleontologi.

În același timp, în aceeași epocă, în aceeași lume sunt oameni care neagă știința, care o consideră o minciună generalizată, care îi neagă descoperirile și care se ascund în spatele credințelor iraționale.

Acești oameni devin, treptat, captivi aceluiași univers întunecat din care au ieșit strămoșii lor, ignorând că a fost nevoie de mii de strămoși dinaintea-le care să le dea privilegiul vieții în ignoranță.

Avem contribuții incredibile în tehnologie, în explorarea legilor fizicii și în tot ce înseamnă tehnologie computațională cuantică, unele cu implicații în criptografia modernă, contribuții care duc înainte miniaturizarea calculatoarelor, telefoanelor cu ecran tactil, capacității de stocare a informații la ordine gigantice de magnitudine față de acum doar câteva zeci de ani.

Și avem și indivizi care refuză intervenții medicale, sau medicamentoase, sub teama că ar putea să ne schimbe genomul sau să facă alte bazaconii.

Mai rău, o astfel de polarizare a discursului respectă legile lui Cipolla, la care se adaugă una formulată anul acesta de Perissi și Bardi care spune că "omul este cea mai tâmpită specie în tot ecosistemul", pentru că tinde să exploateze excesiv resursele acestuia.

Când eram copil ne întrebam dacă, într-o zi, vom descoperi viață "extraterestră". În timpul vieții mele s-ar putea că am ajuns aici.

Ce-am subestimat, și Cipolla are dreptate și aici, e cât de mult, într-o singură iterație a unei singure vieți, vom ajunge să avem proști care să capteze mulțimea.

Incredibil de mulți. Cu incredibil de multă putere.

E un memento mori, povestea rocilor de pe Marte. Înainte de orice, suntem trecători.

Am de gând să le spun copiilor mei povestea asta. Că nu suntem singulari în Univers. Dar că, cel mai apropiat de noi, pe un punct roșietic, povestea vieții a avut început, un cuprins, și foarte posibil o încheiere.

Fără Zei. Fără temple. Fără ofrande sau promisiunea unui paradis. Fără poezie, fără muzică, fără cimitire sau gropi comune. Fără vreun rost, fără vreun sens, altul decât inexorabilitatea sistemelor complexe.

Poate ar trebui să fim mai atenți la acest imens cadou din partea nimicului. Că într-un hău, o imensitate a sferelor, de la milioane de kilometri distanță, o pietricică își împarte secretele cu noi, încât să închidem un capitol poate magic al istoriei noastre ca specie:

N-am fost primii. N-am fost singurii. Și știm cum se termină.

#medicinromania

1. BBC had a story about Bowie's unfinished secret project and mentioned in passing his last album. I listened to his Blackstar and I now know what a Bowiesque dirge with a Miles Davis cameo sounds like.
2. Mihai Viteazul was not the hero we were taught in school. Blow me down!
3. Carnen Crețu and Dan Ungureanu mentioned the Romanian national anthem.

Having one name only is good for certain things: tagging all accomplishments and wrongdoings to the individual that they belong to. The downside is loss of anonymity (which is quite precious for many reasons, e.g. keeping unwanted attention at bay, staying away from vulture media, corp or govt overreach). Having multiple names tackles the downsides somewhat. Writers (subversive or heavily eschewing social mores) and revolutionaries have used secondary monikers as protection from dragging their public and primary personhoods into their more speculative personas. People in witness protection programs, criminals or released prisoners have used it too.

Speculations:
1. Would it make sense for most people to have an anonymous public presence that is heavily insulated from prying eyes (including govt, corps, banks, friends, even immediate family)? What would be the pros and cons of such a society? Did this happen in the past and what did we learn from it (e.g. pirates, mercenaries, corporations, LLCs, gangsters)? How would it be accomplished today (e.g. blockchain)?
2. Should people be allowed to change their name/identity as easily as buying a loaf of bread? Should they be allowed to change their social security numbers as well (which would trigger a complete redo of most pension and retirement schemes)?
3. Should people be allowed to swap or trade their names and identities as they please? Historically, imposters, bastard children and cuckoo children come to mind as protoexamples of this scheme.
4. Should citizenship, private/public ownership and national borders be completely redefined to account for the above?
5. Should animals, plants, natural ecosystems, robots and AIs be granted (un)limited personhood status with (un)equal rights to humans? Why or why not?
6. Should money be redefined to be more explicit about its time value or completely replaced/complemented (gradually or in few discrete gated steps) with a different and more flexible universal exchange medium (e.g. crypto coin, rare elements, social credits)?
7. How do various value systems compare against each other empirically (e.g. religious, philosophical, consumerist, modern/Western union/pension schemes, etc)?

The Northern Miner is running an old-fashioned CA$1,000,000 gold coins treasure hunt. Here is the clue poem:

In a land crowned cold and vast
Old riches whisper through the past
A mirror hides what veins once bore
The verdigris behind the lore

Beyond the clouds where glaciers reign
Gold sighs beneath the mountain’s strain
Yet peaks mislead with gilded hue
The path lies where the birch trees grew

Salt air once bore a copper song
But brittle roots don’t guide for long
The brine remembers, but forgets
The current pulls where moss still wets

Where fire stitched a northern name
And red seams sparked a fleeting flame
No ember now ignites the track
The phoenix flew and won’t look back

A giant coin reflects the sun
But circles lead where none begun
Its gleam is but a siren’s light
No miner’s truth is held in sight

Where chalco fever gripped the east
Where Flinty’s claim once never ceased
The water hums an ancient code
But silence marks the current road

The Shield bends low through sleeping trees
Where sunken whispers told of ease
But breaks don’t speak nor faults confess
What roots may hold in quiet press

Where iron sings and cedars lean
The northern call remains unseen
A truth not loud, but forged to be
The strong, the silent, and the free

One marker stands, by shore and pine
Its message dulled by passing time
What once declared, now disappears
Beneath the weight of growing years

Where warm the zinc-toned waters fell
And Bathurst rang its deepest bell
The sounds now fade but echo trails
In folds where even memory pales

Where suits and stones have struck accord
And Bay Street crowned the mining hoard
No gilded desk nor numbered share
Will point to where the birches stare

Step not in haste where paths align
But where the trail forgets design
Beyond the mark the tall grass grows
And buried speaks what no one knows

Not marked by gold but core alone
A sliver rests in overgrown
Look past the script, behind the brush
The compass turns, and all is hush

Abrahamic God	Sun
Has veen around for less than 10,000 years (despite humans being around for much longer than that).	Has been around for billion years.
Claims to have created life in a few days and is 100% done.	Created life over billions of years and is not done yet.
Takes credit for everything (except evil) and never admits fault for his fuckups.	Just does its thing.
Super jealous, petty and vengeful.	Does not and cannot give a flying fuck about us.
Insecure about his place in our hearts and very manipulative by presenting false dichotomies.	See above.
Absent for at least one thousand years and has only sent like three prophets to fine tune his message.	Always there and keeps sending us signs of his greatness and magnitude every f-ing second since forever and for many more billions of years yet.
Has a coterie of charlatans, self-deluded fanboys and fools promoting his greatest hits.	Is all virtually alone (unless you count Jupiter as a mini-me in the making) and slowly drawing closer to us.

BBC has an excellent guide on sun protection. It appears that too much time outside during daytime (even when cloudy or wearing sun protection) is slowly killing you. It is ironic that the Sun giveth and Sun taketh away at the same time. So, in a way, all humans are very much vampires that would do much better if they spent time outside only at night, so our ancient crepuscular ancestors had much better instincts than we do. Of course, I am glib making that remark, as our ancestor diminutive mammals had to be crepuscular by necessity of evading the apex daytime and nighttime predators of their days.

We just watched Foundation 3.8 episode. A few observations:
1. Day's trial and place in history smells a lot like the history of JC, Christianity and priesthood (both then and now) with a small twist: Demerzel/Daneel is YHWH. There is an interesting small parallel here between Sunmaker-18 and Cleon XXV.
2. The Mule and Gaal's meeting is predestined and almost anticlimactic.
3. Novacula is a lot like the Death Star from Star Wars (or more likely the other way around).
4. Some interesting concepts are mentioned: Luminism and the history and social structure of Aurora are hinted at.

1. Saturday night, I dreamt that I was eating next to my brother Dan at the table. When more came to join us at the table, Dan moved closer to me, elbow to elbow, which when I woke up reminded me of childhood when we used to have supper elbow to elbow outside at my grandparents.
2. Monday night, I dreamt about myself, M, Dan and his wife MM and eldest child CP together discussing something about history. CP told us about a school paper that he wrote related to our discussion and started reading to us from his notes.
3. Last night, I dreamt about living in a house that resembled my maternal grandparents house except that the only living creatures were: CG with her dog Mila sleeping inside under a transparent tarp, M and Eddie sleeping outside on the veranda under a similar transparent tarp, and a bunch of hyenas and coyotes roaming very near the house (as our fence was broken in places). I was the only one awake and as I came nearer the house, the wild animals dispersed and CG and M woke up.

BBC reports on a double strike by Israel on Monday:

Monday's attack on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis saw an initial strike kill at least one person, a Reuters cameraman who was operating a live TV feed from a staircase on the side of the hospital building. A second strike in the same location about 10 minutes later hit journalists and rescuers who were attending the scene.

At least 20 people were killed including four health workers and five journalists who worked for international media outlets, including the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye.

This is common IDF and US practice and is also known as a double-tap strike and is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention of 1949 (regardless of the lawyery weaselling mansplaining that IDF is conducting an extra-territorial operation against a 50,000-strong terrorist organization which they already halved by now and not a full-scale war against a mostly defenseless civilian population of millions which they are also NOT systematically starving slowly).

CNN reports:

“For everything that happened on October 7, for every one person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die,” said Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva in the recordings released by Israel’s Channel 12 news on Friday. “It doesn’t matter now if they are children.”

“The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations,” Haliva said in the recordings.

Obviously, those words were taken out of context. /s

Translation from Samuel Noah Kramer

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber.

Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey.

Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.

Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn.

You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.

Your place goodly as honey, pray lay your hand on it,
Bring your hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup your hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment.

There is a fascinating story on CNN about a 1978 structural engineering f*ck-up that was luckily rectified in time. That a couple of architecture students caught it is only one of the scary parts of this story. I wonder how many large cities have proper building permit by-laws on quartering winds stress on tall buildings and other such esoteric dangers, especially in zones that are more prone to natural disasters. Also, what is the minimum horizon for resilience in worst case events (e.g. 100-year flood plains, earthquakes of X degrees, fires, landslides, suicidal airplane pilots)?

D-l Borcean vrea sa poarte un dialog pe tema Israel, Palestina și Hamas. Intrebarile d-lui:
1. Este înființarea din 1948 a statului Israel justificată din punct de vedere istoric?
2. A atacat statul israelian în mod neprovocat pe vecinii arabi?
3. A oferit statul israelian propuneri de pace și de recunoaștere a unui stat palestinian vecin? Au acceptat arabii astfel de propuneri și în mod specific au înaintat palestinienii propuneri similare, inclusiv de recunoaștere a unui stat evreu?
4. A facilitat Hamas un regim democratic în Gaza de când a preluat puterea în 2006?
5. Militanți Hamas au intrat în Israel pe 7 octombrie 2023, când au ucis și violat numeroși evrei. Au răpit 251 de evrei pe care i-au încarcerat în subteranele Gazei, în condiții barbare. Israel a răspuns trimițându-și armata să-i elibereze pe ostatici și să anihileze Hamas. A înfometat Israel populația din Gaza în mod deliberat, ca tactică de război?
6. Este Hamas o organizație teroristă care susține un genocid la adresa evreilor? Este Israel un stat terorist care susține un genocid la adresa palestinienilor sau arabilor în general?

As adauga si eu cateva intrebari:
7. Cat teritoriu a concesionat si cat a acaparat ilegal Israel din 1948 pana azi?
8. De ce nu accepta Israel granitele din '48 si tot propune granite aiurea cu sute de bantustane palestiniene?
9. Cati israelieni si cati palestinieni au murit la mana celorlalti? Listati separat pe categorii de varsta: adulti, femei, copii, batrani. Aproximari sunt suficiente.
10. Cum se face ca la ONU singurul prieten constant al Israelului este SUA care a exersat puterea de veto cel mai mult in favoarea Israelului? Toate celelalte tari sunt oarbe?

Less than one month ago, CERN data published in Nature shows (with 5-sigma certainty) that beauty baryons violate CP-symmetry which does not fit in the Standard Model. Well, if you understand what science is all about, you rejoice and feel some excitement as old Gods are slowly taken down once more as we go deeper down the rabbit hole, but if you are stubborn and believe in the God of the Gaps, you smirk, quote your favorite holy book and double down on your ignorance. Sadly, there are a lot more of the latter folk on this Earth.

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JMA-PSOS

December 2025

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Syndicate

Page Summary

Doug Krugman’s WaPo op-ed
Proving the non-divine origin of the Torah in two minutes
Old 80s Romanian joke
Brooks hits the nail on the head about how to fight the US autocracy in the making
2039: IA si umanitatea
Depression, suicide and cultural inertia
America’s Early Onset Dementia
Țuțea și Cioran
The AI bandwagon left the station and the brakes are creaky
Eddie walked away into the great beyond
Thucydides and Cleon as they apply to modern populism
Slavic vs Romanian improvements
Chris Hedges got uninvited by the NPCA
Călin Georgescu: viitorul împărat chior în țara orbilor
Sample of Romanian language and word etymology
The split light/dark personality of US conservative Christians
Nazification of USA in real time
Enshittification of society and philosophies
Netanyahu trolls Gazans and the World at UN
Most common dreams that people have googled
Palestinian statehood UN vote on 9/12 explainer
The Kimmel incident and free speech
God’s chosen people deeds in Gaza City
Fall Equinox 2025
1960s shift in life expectancy in socialist countries
Wild flowers
Hot news: Antifa agreement with Trump
Kimmel, FCC and free speech
US immigration to Canada: 1776 to 2023
IDF found new ways to kill indiscriminately
Israel is destroying ancient artifacts in Gaza City
UN commission finds Israel committing genocide in Gaza
US sends Russian political asylum seekers back to Russia
1994 Budapest Memorandum
An American nightmare as it unfurls upon itself and the world
Charlie Kirk dixit
Gabriel Diaconu despre viata pe Marte si pe Terra
Bowie's last album and Romanian history
Having a single name vs full anonymity: a future society
The Great Canadian Treasure Hunt
Abrahamic God vs the Sun
The Sun nourishes us and is killing us slowly also
Foundation 3.8 episode
3 recent dreams
Israel double strike or double tap?
Retired IDF Maj Gen Haliva explosive remarks about Gaza casualties
Oldest known love poem (written by a priestess to her king bridegroom)
William The Measurer and his greatest mismeasuring
Despre Israel, Palestina și Hamas. Un dialog ratat
Standard Model decaying faster than originally thought

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