Last few days I’ve seen a number of references to “Technoblade,” which struck no chords with me. Apparently a “Minecraft” YouTube streamer… not my area of interest. Nevertheless, the references came often enough that I looked this up. It’s… something. It’s kind of “Iron Giant says ‘Superman'” in its impact.
You’re welcome.
Sure, it’s just a “college project,” but you know that this, or something even more uncomfortable, is coming.
I don’t know who I feel more sorry for: those olds like myself who remember pre-9/11 flying, when it was a bit inconvenient and often a bit uncomfortable, but overall a decent enough experience, or those who have only known post-9/11 security theater and steerage-class accommodation.
I posted a link to this vid nearly two weeks ago, but this guy has a good time laughing at it. Some amusing and interesting discussion.
BTW, “the beautiful ones” is likely a reference to “Universe 25 ” or an experiment with mice that showed that excess population density leads to disaster. A “rodent utopia” led to, among other horrors:
Consequently, the next generation of mice, having never experienced healthy mouse behaviour, had no concept of mating or parenting, or even territorialism. Some – dubbed the “beautiful ones” – spent their time eating, drinking, and grooming themselves in seclusion. Elsewhere, mice formed gangs of cannibalistic, raping plunderers.
Tell me that doesn’t sound a lot like modern cities. Go on. Tell me.
I wonder what would happen to the TikToker shown above if, on one of her drinking and partying binges after yet another empty, meaningless day of snacking, drinking and goofing off, she encountered some of the people that I’ve posted *other* kinds of videos about. Assuming she survived the experience with her brain still capable of rational thought, would she look at the world differently? Would she maybe reflect on her life spent accomplishing nothing and decide to maybe consider actually *doing* something?
I also wonder if she looks at young men whose greatest ambition is to spend all day playing online video games and thinks that *they* are losers.
I think a decent case can be made that we might see the collapse of civilization within a generation or two… and possibly sooner. The end of the Soviet Union over thirty years ago seemed like the dawning of a glorious new age… but we’ve squandered that opportunity. We’ve ignored the barbarians gathering outside the gates… and gathering *within* the gates. You can see it in many of the videos and news stories I’ve posted. Not just a coarsening of discourse, but a collapse of the family and an increasing feralness among fatherless “children.”
The piece below is depressing, and very likely right. I don’t agree with all of it… but you don’t need 100% agreement to agree that things are in a bad way, that something must be done, and the general direction of what that something is.
Keep this person away from children. Not even so much the ideology she’s pushing, it’s the fundamental lack of logic and reason. Or, rather, the fundamental presence of anti-logic.
This sort of person is the antithesis of “educator.”
A university professor with a nose ring? Yeah, no.
Here we are, the leaders of the future:
EDIT: Huh. YouTube has decided that a news video has “violated their terms of service.” You can see part of the video here:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/12/video-shows-child-hit-and-swear-at-cop-in-minnesota/
Not generally what you want to see…
After four years, security camera footage has been released that shows how Richard Russell stole a turboprop airliner from SeaTac airport. He flew around for a while having a grand old time, scaring the pants off air traffic control, before intentionally crashing the plane on an island.
What he did was criminal and potentially could have resulted in many, many deaths. But it seems he didn’t want to kill anyone but himself, and the way he went out, with such apparent joy both in the way he flew and the things he said, has made him something of a hero to many. There was clearly something wrong with the man (some thinking that he was dain bramaged from repeated concussions during high school football)… but he went out on his own terms, I suppose. And these days… that’s about the most a lot of people can even dream of hoping for.
So a privately owned bus catches fire in New Zealand. That’s an unusual enough sight. but the bus, engulfed in flames, decides to wake itself the fark up and drive off. That’s a little unusual.
Where the BBC extols the virtue of buildings made from mud in a desert climate. “It is the architecture of the future.”
Every year the residents of Djenné gather together to repair and reclay the mosque, supervised by a guild of senior masons. … Everyone takes part. Boys and girls mix the mud, women bring the water and masons direct the activity.
Because buildings that require the *entire* community, down to children, to labor to repair on an ongoing, annual and permanent basis… sure, that’s “sustainable.”
Much is made of the mud architecture of Yemen. Great. Ummm… what was the last great contribution to science or engineering or philosophy or medicine to come out of Yemen?
I imagine Britain will be seeing a lot of mud buildings soon enough. As modern Britain falls to the third world, the millions of invading colonizers will, after tearing down what the natives built over a course of centuries, construct their new mud-filled civilization using the wrack and ruin they stand upon. I’m not sure how great mud will be as a construction material on an island that gets fairly constant rainfall, but, hey, such questions are inappropriate in this new world of Other Ways Of Knowing.