Sounds like a simple question at first. The good news? I'm not going to go into music theory. Nevertheless, the question is serious. What exactly is a song? Pick up a score, a set of tabs, but it's not a song. Sure, I could learn to read it, and to some extent then, "hear" the music in my head, but it's not the song. Compare the following: Are they the same song? Why not? Sure, the arrangement is different, the singers are different, and in this case, the styles are radically different, yet there is a commonality there that any…
All posts in philosophy
In his post on Supervillany, Brian discusses our ruling elites, Kevin Spacey, and the utter lack of accountability. The whole thing is worth a read but the following jumped out. Ask most people their opinion of pre-democratic societies, and aside from a few D&D nerds, most will decry the monarchies and aristocracies of yore as tyrannical nightmares. The king and his barons--possibly with some oversight from the Church--made all the important policy decisions, and the common man got no vote. If you got saddled with a mad or wicked ruler, you had to wait for him to die…
I'd mentioned before that, despite my respect for the achievements of Thor Hyerdahl and his expedition on the Kon-Tiki, that the quote they chose to showcase in the Kon-Tiki museum, especially as presented, was vapid and stupid beyond belief. Boundaries exist. For that matter, despite the overwhelming leftism of the profession, you'll still find a lot of psychologists and counselors telling their patients that they need to establish boundaries. Mostly these are the ones who realize that women can be batshit-crazy BPD, and one of the overwhelming traits of BPD is an utter and total lack of personal boundaries. I'm…
First of all, posting has been sparse, and not up to what I promised. I'm fixing that. First - Nick Cole reposts and expands his hit blog post on how CTRL-ALT-REVOLT was banned by his publisher, despite being a successful and well-selling author. On a related note, Larry Correia is on mewe after being banned from facebook again, and the jackasses at China Mike's are patting themselves on the back for frivolous flagging. Second, scumbags have learned to weaponize Facebook’s lax stupidity. They simply find someone they don’t like, and then report their posts. Nobody with a brain…
How do you prepare for the unexpected? It is, by definition, something you did not predict ahead of time. In dealing with the unexpected, the important thing is what tools you have at hand to deal with the various facets that present themselves, and to recognize, isolate, and work the problem. Put another way, work through all the failure modes you can. Have a plan, or set of them. Sure, there may not be one that is a "perfect fit," but simply having the plans, and practicing them, gives you a structure to work with when you need to improvise.…
For an atheist, Stefan has an an increasing tendency to take Christianity utterly seriously. Ignore the clickbait title - the caller is a woman with a heartrending tale of growing up with a mother who, while not Marion Zimmer Bradley levels of malevolent evil, is far closer to that than being a human being. Sometimes the most respect we can pay our parents is to treat them as adults, and enforce consequences for their actions - especially those that continue into your own adulthood.…
In my recent post "One Step at a Time" I offhandedly mentioned how ramping back up a skill you haven't kept honed involved wasted time getting back up to speed. Turns out that Alexander Hellene was on the same wavelength: I picked up a guitar a few days ago for the first time in months and woo boy, was I struggling. I mean, it wasn’t like I completely forgot how to play, but the fluidity and the ease just weren’t there. Thank God for muscle memory, or else my fingers would’ve been nearly completely useless. I used…
Over on the Red Pill Religion Youtube Channel, John C Wright and Max discuss neurolinguistic programming and how it affects things. Wright is particularly well situated to comment on that, as he wrote the authorized sequel to A. E. Van Vogts "Null-A" books. Covered in the discussion are thought traps, avoiding them through precision of language and how decades of propaganda, advertising, and tyrannical linguistic programming rework language to hide and shade (what Owen Benjamin would calls Wizardry). A specific example is given of how the abortion debate has become between the tyrants who won't leave a woman free to…