Coriolus Nimrod
@coriolusn.bsky.social
280 followers 630 following 4.9K posts
PGH, law, et cetera
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coriolusn.bsky.social
Wow, that could go right?
coriolusn.bsky.social
settle on the best option, given all considerations. I don't live in Maine and don't care about Mills one way or the other, but there is no inherent conflict in being willing to overlook a particular flaw in one candidate but finding insufficient reasons to do so with another.
coriolusn.bsky.social
That seems unduly simplistic. It would be entirely possible to see Sanders' age as a potential problem but believe he had sufficient other positive qualities (or his opponents had sufficiently negative ones) to endorse him anyway. Nobody is a perfect candidate, we all weigh the pros and cons and
coriolusn.bsky.social
Somehow it is more horrifying that it is supposed to be a mouth than what I originally assumed, that someone had taken a bite of a sentient PBJ pie.
coriolusn.bsky.social
Is there imposter syndrome imposter syndrome, where I think I have imposter syndrome but actually I am genuinely an imposter?
coriolusn.bsky.social
The bane of the contemporary world is men who became unimaginably rich by being good at one thing - or, more often, just being lucky - and then become convinced that financial success is proof positive that they are transformational geniuses who understand everything better than anyone.
sharonk.bsky.social
thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.
coriolusn.bsky.social
The vaccine thing runs off of replacing a real risk, but one that has become obscure because of the success of vaccines, with a pretend one. People are bad at understanding risk.

But with special ed, that isn't assessing and comparing risks. It's an immediate harm to their kids.
coriolusn.bsky.social
I would never blame someone for being, say, a Ravens fan, as horrible as the Ravens are, because you can't help where you are from. But Islanders, or Yankees, or Cubs? Man, there was another option right there.
coriolusn.bsky.social
The thing is, these parents are everywhere and evenly distributed throughout the population and communicate with each other. MAGA just created an activist core against itself in every community in America, red, blue or purple.
coriolusn.bsky.social
Why are you all talking about Diane Keaton? Please, please, make it just a Diane Keaton appreciation day. I am not sure if I can take it if she is dead.
coriolusn.bsky.social
That sounds like Golden Corral also.
coriolusn.bsky.social
They aren't trying to save money. They aren't trying to fight crime in Chicago. They don't genuinely think that there is an antifascist insurrection underway in Portland. These are lies. We all know they are lies. Stop pretending we don't know it.
coriolusn.bsky.social
But for some reason, headline writers keep treating the lie as if it is a good faith, if misguided, belief. It isn't. Nobody thinks it is. The guy who wrote the actual article you are producing the hed for doesn't: this is how he ends his essay.
"It won’t be long before crucial agency missions begin to fail. This won’t matter to those for whom the goal is vengeance and demolition. (As Grover Norquist once famously quipped, he wanted to shrink the government to the point that it could be drowned in the bathtub.) But it is sure to matter for the rest of us."
coriolusn.bsky.social
This is about crippling the existing federal government to eliminate alternative power centers that could block the illegal elements of the MAGA project. And everyone knows it. Nobody out there believes this is about cost savings. That is a lie.
coriolusn.bsky.social
Headline writers: please stop granting the Trump administration's bullshit premises. They are not doing this for a rounding error's worth of savings. The way they have gone about it makes it very clear that they don't care at all about savings.
Atlantic headline including the subhed:

"The administration is culling the best and brightest from the federal workforce for a rounding error’s worth in savings."
coriolusn.bsky.social
Like a buffet with someone carving prime rib at the end. More common for a wedding or bar mitzvah than a restaurant in the US, although I did work at a place that would have that setup on Sunday nights years ago.
coriolusn.bsky.social
1) sorry, American - what is a carvery?

2) this should be a Werner Herzog film.
coriolusn.bsky.social
Ah, yes, the deep concern Oliver Cromwell had about Wernher von Braun and the other Nazi scientists of Operation Paperclip.
peark.es
I couldn't believe this but it's true, Thiel can't decide whether the antichrist is Greta or Big Yud. Positively reeling.
(Washington Post) -- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or artificial intelligence are "legionnaires of the Antichrist" in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post.
In the four, roughly two-hour lectures, which began last month and culminated Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Thiel laid out his religious views to a sold-out audience told to keep the contents "off-the-record," according to an event listing. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings.
"In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science," Thiel said in his Sept. 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. "In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It's someone like Greta or Eliezer," he said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry's approach to AI.
coriolusn.bsky.social
I am curious about the details of this incident in which milkshake-wielding antifascists "nearly killed" him.
coriolusn.bsky.social
"Reign" is a strange word to use, isn't it? PMs don't reign. There is another person who does that, and is paid handsomely for it.
coriolusn.bsky.social
One of the Julio-Claudian Emperors was nicknamed after the little boots he wore as a child on the march with the army, and we still call him by that name today.
coriolusn.bsky.social
Is it just a whole section of the country has decided to pretend - to the rest of us and to themselves - to believe something that can't possibly be true so they can further pretend that everyone who isn't being somehow paid off agrees with them?
coriolusn.bsky.social
I mean, this guy is a US Senator, and Tommy Tuberville aside, those guys generally aren't complete idiots. He must just be lying, right?

But who for? Who actually does believe this? Just common sense-wise, it can't possibly be true.