Heh, I remember way back in the Stone Age when I was a drunk teenager and I didn't know jack shit about anything...., so then I went to this kooky weird place called Harvard where they sat down and patiently explained things to me.

And now, mysteriously, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. I probably couldn't do a kidney transplant for you, (but maybe I could, in a pinch!), but the rest of it, I kinda-sorta got yer back. Funny how that works.

Just last week, I asked the guy who set up my laptop what the difference between a router and a modem is.
 

The router-- that router
that's next to the computer--
is there because it routes
(once the user boots.)

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1240w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2023_06/3594232/230210-wifi-routers-bd-2x1.jpg

In case there's any doubts,
the other router routs.

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F49%2F2022%2F07%2F14%2F283-Tools-MaterialsRouterMain-2000.jpg

The device in your house that you get from your ISP (e.g., Comcast) is both a modem and a router. The modem modulates and demodulates the signal to and from your ISP. Think of it as de/encryption. The routers ensures that traffic from your laptop (a page request from your browser, for example) goes back to your laptop and not your Xbox.

It also does other things such as maintaining a firewall to protect against malicious attacks.

I can mansplain port forwarding to you if you're still awake. ;-)

Hi Kylie:

Here's what I, as a woman, think mansplaining is: giving women verbal information that they're not really interested in hearing. Women have extremely short attention spans, and their interests mostly revolve around other people: the men in their lives and the other women in their lives who get in their way. So, when a woman asks a knowledgeable man, say, a history buff, about the Crimean War, he will often tell her everything: the causes, the major players, the geography, the politics, the historical forces, the effect on subsequent geopolitical relations, etc. It will be in many cases an excellent explanation: clear, logical, orderly, and informative. But a few sentences into it, the woman will be going zzzzzzz. That's the way women are.

The problem is compounded when a woman suspects that the man doesn't think much of her brains--for example, that his actual interest is in her bust line. As Lord Chesterfield could tell you, this is a fatal mistake for a man. And the fact that men, who can be very competitive about their stores of knowledge (see birdwatchers), often can't help injecting a note of boastful superiority and even condescension into their explanations.

Finally, there is the feminism factor: interpreting everything a man says or does that involves a woman as some variety of misogyny and then complaining about it.

Charlotte

Replies: @rebel yell, @anonymous

By nightfall our cities would be in flames and the Chinese would be launching their rushed invasion.
 

Oh and Steve, my post from 9 hrs ago is still being withheld while you let corvinus sail right through. Naah, that's not inattention.

Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

Send me $10 and I'll agree with you.

As a longtime Steve fan,I recall the first time he ever allowed comments on his blog.
It was quite a show,as the comments were posted immediately, without moderation.
It was hilarious,as certain commentators,and I bet you can name one or two of them,gave full vent to their commentary id!
Lots of CAPITAL LETTERS AND !!!!! It was too funny to last,( not that the guys didn't have good points,its just that the point and sputter is not his style) and soon the current system was adopted.
It is what it is and we must learn to live,to love,to laugh regardless.
Now have I explained---oops, sorry!😉

Replies: @Kylie, @Reg Cæsar, @Sam Malone

I do not contribute to his thrice-yearly fundraisers because I’m a senior on a fixed income and live very modestly (no cable, no car, no red meat, usually spend far less than $100 a year on clothes, shoes and makeup). What extra money I have goes to animal rescue.
 

Replies: @Kylie

Why no read meat?

Healthy life-style or finances?

You’re welcome.

That link covers the first four seasons. If you check the comments there’s a link for seasons five and six.

Replies: @Kylie

https://archive.org/details/PDTV0144

Replies: @Kylie

None of this going to a liberry with some old woke bat in charge to borrow the DVDs.
 

See the 1st segment of 3 minor doses of stoopiditee. It all adds up, though. and More stupidity at the library - the big one. From the latter post:

Back to the short story, I walk into this big new 20-year old library because the local branch is undergoing major renovations to its new brick building and nice interior. I noticed that this whole new main branch was completely rearranged and remembered that it had been a multi-year project with lots of inconvenience and moving around of books and computers. Nothing was in the same place. I asked one of the librarians dicking around working in the front:

"Hey, I see they spent a lot of time and money here - tell me what's new."

"Everything's new." he said, pointing at the new walls and the lack of the old walls, I guess.

"No, I mean what's new that we didn't have before - some new things, I mean."

"All of it - see all the new stuff." He pointed to the walls again. "The video room is over there now. Things are all different."

"Yeah, I see the escalators are the only things in the same place. Why'd stuff just get moved around? Is this just a way to spend the 82 Million dollars that the idiot taxpayers voted for?"

"No, it was a bond.", the PBS-broadcaster-looking guy explained to me.

"Yeah, so it's 82 Million plus interest!"

The guy was getting pissed. I was getting pissed.

"A friend of mine was going to get a new truck, but the property tax was gonna be too high. He's gonna buy used just because of all this money you people are spending."

"So?"

The guys and ladies (a lady was next to him listening and once in a while saying, in some odd accent, something about "this is all new.") who work in these local government jobs cannot relate this blowing of our tax dollars to anything bad. It's just government money. I had tried to explain, to no avail, and now I don't even want to see that guy again, but the local branch is closed.
 

Yeah, and I know you like him, Kylie, but I just watched Lance White in the last episode of Season IV of The Rockford Files, and I gotta say he really screws up Jim's investigations. Jim ended up with a rifle round hole in the passenger side door of his Firebird because of this prima donna. Hopefully, it'll be repaired by Season V.

Replies: @Kylie

1) A wonderful, temperate, rich continent that is not heavily populated (one that thus remains as it was bequeathed to us by our ancestors) and,
 

Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic, @Mr. Anon, @AnotherDad, @Pastit

Yes. Not to mention the fact of political power. Fringe Americans have little to fear from a white majority*, while whites have reasons to be concerned about living in places dominated by black and brown people, as various events of recent years have shown.

As I mentioned before, Hanania can do stats, but is otherwise not so smart. His take on this issue is like a poor high school debating gotcha point.




* While I believe this to be the case now, we must remember that whites did drive feather Indians off their land. But in current year culture, no white Americans, even nationalist types, are actually going to do anything to minorities. I would deport and "de-citizen" most of the people who have immigrated to the US in recent decades, but I am an extreme outlier, I think. Also, I don't consider deporting people to the place they were born to be unjust or much of a burden.

Replies: @Corvinus

Lets pose the question to the Israeli's. Would you rather have 10 million people where 75% are Jewish or add several million Palestinians for a population of 15 million people where 50% are Jewish?

I don't begrudge the Israeli's answer to preserve their ethno-state based upon a shared heritage.

Replies: @Almost Missouri

May I touch your hair when you're done napping?

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk

The rhetorical question "Has Wokeness Peaked" is an exercise in the popular-understanding of the meaning of "Begging the Question."

The most-important 'begged' question therein is: "What is Wokeness"? Another question would be: "What is 'peaked' supposed to mean here?"

"Wokeness" is, I think, most-usefully defined not as a series little political-cultural manias or fads, but something more total.

Replies: @Meretricious, @Richard B

No, because wokeness also includes trans-mania, which has no immediate racial connotation.

Replies: @Sleep

By the way, every mention of “woke” should be replaced with “anti-White”, in your head, in writing, in conversation.

This is 100% spot on.

Just like "diversity" should too, or "inclusiveness" and "other", basically the person proposing these seemingly harmless words is demanding you be genocided.

It's about time White people become hyper-sensitive like jews are, become hyper defensive of our kind to the point of in your face obnoxiousness and flat out hypocritical chutzpah/gall, just like the jews do.

We need to stop playing along with the kays and start elevating our own people.

I've said it before but I can guarantee Steve doesn't know off the top of his head the numbers of American dead who were tortured to death at the hands of the Japanese in WWII, but Steve will recite like a kindergarten kid doing the alphabet, holohoax numbers and history, you could just flip him a coin and he'll start spewing out those factoids, like an autistic kid with OCD hoping to ward off the evil of a break in the sidewalk.

It's not woke: it's anti-White.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6p1eF732dg

We need to stick up for our kind.

No one else will, if we won't.

Replies: @Stan Adams

Great comment! Thanks!

Yes, Woke, Identity Politics = Antiwhite Hate.

Has it peaked? The black part of it seems to have peaked. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say that there will be no pause in the black fall from Woke grace. They've been used and used up. They're fast being replaced by the immivasion and will become as irrelevant to the hostile elite as a giant pile of rotary phones.

But you're right, antiwhite hate will continue. The reason why is because the hostile elite long ago enshrined Scapegoating into their culture and simply can not function without one. Whites are their scapegoat. They have been for a long time and will continue to be.

As Nietzsche once said in so many words, Anyone who spends a lifetime fighting an enemy, has a real keen interest in making sure their enemy - Stays Alive!

This is good news!

Because, since there is no other scapegoat on the horizon, the longer the hostile elite keeps their scapegoat alive, the better the scapegoat's chances of getting out from under long enough to turn the table on the elite. Stranger things have happened in history.

People like you will lose:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dO6ZlUaN9s0

Replies: @R.G. Camara, @MEH 0910

Woke is anti-white, but the term isn't equivalent in meaning to anti-white. It's a whole worldview/cultural attitude that includes all sorts of wrong ideas (on race, sex/gender, psychology, living a good life) as well as signature fixations, ways of speaking, etc.

Also, if you value precision in rhetoric, you ought not to call wokeness "genocidal." Advocating for genocide--mass murder of whites--remains beyond the pale.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

Oh nuts, I was hoping nobody else had made that joke but I guess it was too obvious.

Replies: @Kylie

“Or desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque?”
 

Replies: @Greta Handel, @Jack D

What I notice is obsession over a fairly minor language issue. A microaggression as it were. There’s little denying it was an attack and that there’s a retaliation to that attack, in the immediate sense. I mean instead of attack, she could have called it a mostly peaceful justified incursion. Is the retaliation ( indiscriminate terror bombing) disproportionate? Was the attack provoked by near term events and long term suffering? Rhetorical, no need to answer.

Desecrate a mosque fka a temple, shootup a rave. And lots of other stuff before and after that. It appears more likely that people who think she is taking sides with her language want her to favor one side.

Replies: @Greta Handel

'Wrong, Ms Mandel, you just did. Twice. First by characterizing one set of attacks as horrific, but not the other; second by characterizing one set as attacks but not the other as “retaliation.”...'
 

An attack and retaliatory attack. I don’t need every utterance on the topic to go back through history and include Deir Yassin or bombing the King David Hotel. Or the invasion of Banu Qurayza.

Replies: @Greta Handel

That poked my eye, too. As did her

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maud_Mandel

Maud Mandel (born June 14, 1967) is an American historian and academic administrator. She is the 18th and current President of Williams College, the first woman to hold that role.[1] Mandel was previously a Professor of History and Judaic Studies and Dean of the College at Brown University.

Mandel received her BA in English from Oberlin College in 1989.[3] In 1993, she received an MA from the University of Michigan, followed in 1998 by a PhD in Modern Jewish History from the same institution.[4]

This is pre-emptive action on Mandel's part. As the evidence of Israeli atrocities and war crimes* mount up, she will remain completely mum.

* Yes, war crimes. Dim**** Netanyahu and his minions officially declared war on Hamas on October 8th. Obviously, the aim was to try the alleged perps in Hamas for war crimes against Israeli civilians and presumably execute them. But it also means that Israeli atrocities against Palestinians will also be officially war crimes.

This makes me believe that Netanyahu and crew were aware of this uprising right from the start. But they misjudged its extent. A mini-uprising was intended, which would be quickly crushed and any remaining Hamas fighters would be tried for war crimes. A PR coup for Netanyahu with the Israeli electorate.

Except it didn't work that way, and the little matter of Israeli war crimes is now on top of the table. Will the ICC investigate and indict Netanyahu ? Don't hold your breath.

Language police! Besides being true, I thought that was a helpful clue of who might be putting the most pressure on the college to make a statement (that is, not the woke students and professors.)

characterizing one set as attacks but not the other as “retaliation”
 

It never seems to occur to people that the Palestinians do not have the wherewithal to respond quickly to Israeli incursions
 

That's 1 in every 100 residents of Gaza has been killed or wounded by Israel's terror-bombings "retaliation" over the past twelve days. (3,785 Gaza dead, plus 13,000 Gaza wounded, over 2,100,000 residents.)

Comparison:

War-related deaths incurred by the USA in the 1941-1945 war: 0.3% of resident-population (over 3.5 years, followed soon by a long economic-boom, family-formation bonanza, baby-boom, decades of exorbitant-dollar-privilege, and very-low immigration by non-European Migrants for a long while; but the inheritors of several generations on, we the living, are now treated somewhat like Gaza-Palestinians ourselves).

Replies: @Hail

So everyone is on the same moral plane - al Qaeda blowing up the WTC and the US destroying al Qaeda? The Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and the US bombing Tokyo? The answer is no. If you think that Hamas has the high ground when they shot up a civilian music festival then you have lost your moral compass.

It's not just a question of who has the wherewithal to respond to whose incursions but the overall morality of their cause and the targets that they choose. Hamas is fighting for the destruction of Israel and they fight for it by trying to kill as many Israeli civilians as they can get their hands on. If they had more "wherewithal" they would just use to to kill more civilians. Israel has plenty of wherewithal and if they wanted to (which they don't) they could kill every last Gazan but that's not their goal at all. They just want to be left alone in their country (and yes it is their country now). No country could be attacked like they just were and not respond. The right of self defense extends even to Jews.

Replies: @Liza, @Reg Cæsar, @Citizen of a Silly Country, @Hypnotoad666, @Pierre de Craon, @Hibernian

My attitude is it is not a concern of most Americans, and US troops should not be placed in harm’s way as a result of this. Most Americans are getting sick of this. The country has its own problems.

I might buy some Israel bonds as a private citizen. Or perhaps an Israeli index fund-you are betting on the ability of Jewish people to make money after all.

Replies: @J.Ross

I saw this play out in my own grandparents’s acrimonious marriage of a Croatian Catholic to a Serbian Orthodox.

I (and may be others too) would love to read it, if you write more about it. Trials and tribulations of diversity at microscopic scale.

It's Yugoslavia all over again. Bratcheskaya voina. Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Replies: @Kylie

These analogies are nonsense

Israel is stealing land and expanding and has no plans to stop expanding

If someone across the street stole your house...you would be upset and it has nothing to do with the fact that you have a 'brotherly' relationship

Hunsdon wrote:

I don’t know who is to blame.
 

All of that was wrong -- both in principle and from a purely pragmatic viewpoint: it is not turning out well. This is not complicated.

And now the Zionists are there.

What should be done?

The Zionists should leave.

But of course they won't.

At the very least, the Zionists should accept that non-Jews in Israel and in the Occupied Territories should be given equal rights with Jews -- from the Right of Return onward.

And, someday, that may actually happen.

But only after a lot of innocent people die.

Replies: @epebble, @Hunsdon, @Prester John

Even the KGB and Stasi caught rapists and murderers.

Replies: @Hannah Katz, @J.Ross

Well, since race is now known to be a thing which doesn't actually exist, can murder be that far behind? Shouldn't be too hard to wrestle these stats into submission.

Meanwhile, keep in mind 1) it's not blacks, it's black males between 14 and 40 so more like '4/58' and 2) the closure rate is dramatically lower now, especially for black crime, so it's actually more like 4/78.

This is skewed data. It is a known fact that law enforcement under persecuted white murderers. Read Killers of the Flower Moon.

Replies: @Forgot my Name

Classic stuff, Kylie.

That’s how you know she’s a real beauty. The less she’s made up, the prettier she is. All the makeup, like in Scarface, actually detracts from her looks.

Totally agree.

"And she can act too."

Yes, she has the rare gift of being able to convey thought as well as emotion. She is totally in the moment onscreen and that, combined with her matchless beauty, makes her unforgettable.

I love her in this scene. We see and feel everything Ellen is feeling. Meanwhile poor Daniel Day-Lewis is so mannered and Methody. I get the feeling he's just reeling off the conversational lines waiting for his chance to "emote". Whereas she is feeling her way through this thicket of emotions, you can see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. It's such a poignant performance.

https://youtu.be/5vqnFqc4XEQ?si=Oc7hkDt-Rfd0qEaP

I don’t think any woman was ever more beautiful than Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and The Age of Innocence.
 

Replies: @MGB, @Kylie

I don't think any woman was ever more beautiful than Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and The Age of Innocence.

https://youtu.be/GuidzJ0iyVs?si=ORJ9soX_NPA2Z3kn

Replies: @Twinkie

Kim Basinger in her prime was better looking and sexier IMO.

For me, I found a 40 something Angie Dickinson sexy as hell.

Hmm, Best looking were Judy and Audrey Landers back in the day.

Replies: @Old Virginia, @Kylie

I no longer keep a scorecard of who did what, at least not for mainstream purposes, but whichever gal was the lead in "White Oleander" she gets my vote OK.

Otherwise put me down with like Lucinda Childs and Peyton Smith and so forth.

I like Billy Bob Thornton, but I thought Slingblade was despicable, and predictable. I turned it off halfway through.

Replies: @Kylie

If he changes the post title once comments are posted he creates a distinct post, it's like a time travel paradox.

Replies: @Kylie

As a white woman, I would not set foot in present day South Africa.

Killing someone for “political” reasons is just fine there.

Replies: @Richard B

https://www.theonion.com/scientists-discover-gene-responsible-for-eating-whole-g-1819565291

I remember when Wheat Thins and Triscuits came out at about the same time, both as super-healthy alternatives to, say, Bugles or Doodles or Cool Ranch Doritos. Going by taste and texture I much preferred Wheat Thins. Later when I understood a little about nutrition I was shocked by the sugar content in a nominally healthy product (or, for that matter, that a Pop Tart has far more calories than any chocolate bar). Happily Triscuit is actually somewhat healthy and now has numerous flavors, but I still now rely on Dare Breton Everything crackers (with Alouette and cucumber). This is the shadow of Howard Moskowitz. He's the guy who figured out how to add maximum sugar to a nominal non-dessert without the desserter picking up on it. Read about him in Michael Moss's Salt, Sugar, and Fat.

Replies: @Mr. Deplorable

If you have a problem with Cheerios, never, ever eat a Wheat Thin. Or a Sun Chip. You can go through a whole box. Or bag.
 

Or Grooves--my wife is addicted to them

You can go through a whole box. Or bag.
 

Replies: @Ben tillman

Not to mention Count Chocula.

Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease

If you have a problem with Cheerios, never, ever eat a Wheat Thin. Or a Sun Chip. You can go through a whole box. Or bag.
 

Doritos
Donuts (especially with any glaze)
Any HFCS soft drink

LOL! That'd have been excellent, Kylie. It's too bad Jack D. does not work pro-Bono. That is, unless he's got Bono for a client.

A man who defends himself pro-Bono has a boner for a client.

- One of the Founding Fathers.

Replies: @Kylie

William Bradford set us on the way to "marriage equality" in the spring of 1621 by announcing at Plymouth's first wedding that he was acting only in his capacity as a magistrate, not as a clergyman, although he was invested both types of authority. In other words, he took marriage from the church and handed it over to the state. Of course, he was just following Calvin, who compared marriage to agriculture, and farming isn't a sacrament, is it?

Progressive Protestants think rainbow "welcoming" flags and same-sex nuptials are the fulfillment of the Reformation. Hidebound Papists wholeheartedly agree!

(Bradford is an ancestor of Hugh Hefner in more ways than one.)

1962 was a major milestone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVf6MXZPSPU&ab_channel=newtownmadras

Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist

Many would say there are always alternating relatively-liberal and relatively-conservative movements ongoing in any "religion," however defined. If all it takes is a sustained period of relatively-liberal religion, and if it be true that we Europeans (or specifically Northwest-Europeans) are particularly vulnerable, we should wonder why aggressive-and-metastatic Wokeness did not emerge a lot earlier.

The biggest single difference, or at least a very-large difference, many would say, is arrival of the emancipated members of a non-European ethnic-group and religion, from Eastern Europe, primarily between the mid-1880s and mid-1910s but also topped-off several times thereafter, and now existing partly as a para-national elite. This group arrived with an aggrieved mentality, with (crucially) a separate intellectual tradition, and armed with elite-diasporic ethics, whereas we White-Protestants were simply who we've always been.

Many of the leading Protestants of the late-19th and early 20th century were strongly against that group. The curious person on this point should consult some of the works of Henry Adams, a bonafide member of the elite. He was of age to see the pre- and post-periods of the arrival of the group to which I allude. He and others came to envision that that group would hijack the country. Meanwhile, these same Protestant-elite observers viewed various protean, proto-leftist movements among their own kind with some disdain, sometimes whimsical disdain, and usually a lot less alarm.

I share your views on the Unitarian movement of the 19th century and what it became by the mid-20th century and since, but there were also right-wing unitarians (and right-wing Quakers) and it's far from clear that they would have forced Wokeness onto White-America without many other changes. I would also note that the Unitarian-Universalist Church of our time is actually heavily composed of people born into that other, above-alluded-to religion.

And all of this “save-the-world” stuff came from the influence of the Jews of the Netherlands.

Replies: @kaganovitch

To understand 2023 America one has to understand 1630 Colonial America.

Scratch any "Progressive" and you'll find a Calvinist-saturated Puritan screaming to get out.

Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist

It’s all one people assuming they are sufficiently good and powerful to take responsibility for saving other, lesser people from their own fates.

Bingo!

Maybe because if they said it to his face, he'd kick their asses. Growing up with a name like that, he's probably pretty handy in a scrap

I've experienced this firsthand in meeting non-college-educated Europeans who formed their ideas about 20th century history by being impressed at museum exhibits.

It’s just a different group that’s been made to feel unwelcome.
 

The difference now is that they're taking the obvious next step, as is so much of our society, and explicitly jettisoning the icky white people. The ones without whom the museum wouldn't even exist. The ones without whom the society wouldn't even exist.

Replies: @Kylie

Except that not everyone feels welcome at the museum. It’s just a different group that’s been made to feel unwelcome. Stupid sow doesn’t see that. Of course she doesn’t. She’s an educator!
 

Replies: @Frau Katze

It’s just a different group that’s been made to feel unwelcome.
 

Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease

It's the old white lady version of burn the coal, pay the toll.

Replies: @Kylie

I suppose this museum in Portland and others are just swimming in cash.

You fire your free volunteers who have done a professional job and you pay (allegedly) college students as short time temps to do an much inferior job.

Say, $20/hr versus free.

Woke in action.

So museum funds formerly used for exhibits and upkeep will subsidize slack jawed community college students "of color" far above their local numbers or interest in the museum. Some will "work" while high on pot and others conspire to steal what they can. Gay museum administrators will be happy to recruit new young male eye candy and new adventures in the museum furnace room.

The next museum fundraising pitch will have photos of students (acceptably non White, lots of fat lesbians) in uniforms touting their new improved non docent workforce.

"I think da gift shop is on the first floor. I'm on my break now.."

I was feeling bad for the ladies but less so now. The vast majority probably voted for this. That's not to say Republicans are much better. Where are the House hearings on the BLM and Antifa riots? Where is the accountability?

Thanks, Kylie. I'd never seen that video. He is a heck of a guitar player. I'd go see him but he does not tour much and then only around California. Here's one of my favorites. Also check out his acoustic Stairway to Heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUiYamjM4GU

Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Kylie

Believe it or not, pop and folk music existed long before the electric guitar became dominant, and many of these older styles persist in some form today. At their best, they are sublimely, vitally melodic in a way guitar rock can never be.
https://youtu.be/zUFg6HvljDE?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/GrXsmfmqcFA?feature=shared

It must be odds against there ever being “same-sex marriage” when there are 173 genders widely spread across the population.

Laws of probability, innit?

Replies: @Bill Jones

Wholly agree.

And add the political glee with which the courts look past violent crimes of favored groups while heaping both state and federal prosecutions on un-favorable groups; convicting mere bystanders; handing out multiple life sentences and 413 year terms, etc.

Agree, early word on 4chan was that while you cannot yet call the ordinary Australian awake, between their nightmare version of the lockdown and the normal behavior of aboriginals, nobody has any patience for this.

Troll ,lol, it's all good.

Sorry! That Troll was supposed to be a Lol. But I was laughing so hard I hit the wrong button. 😂

Replies: @tyrone

Agreed, it's far too long.

John McWhorter was a bit slow as well. But he gets it now.
https://twitter.com/JohnHMcWhorter/status/954706351497859072

I'm guessing that was the return from a Google search.

From a corporate party celebrating the disappearance of white men.

Replies: @Richard B

What's so creepy about it?

Replies: @Liza, @Kylie

The top five on RS’s next list
 

Replies: @Kylie

For the past decade, an elite consensus began to emerge. It was marketed as a worldview of optimism, of progress and justice brought about by the dawning of correct morality.
 

White Christians (in particular American Protestants) had this missionary impulse for centuries and it did not really go out of style until the Soviet sponsored "anti-colonial" post WWII era. What where the thousands of American missionaries doing in China, the Pacific Islands, Africa, etc. ? Were they not trying to create a better world and teach correct morality?

People here see Leftism as some sort of uniquely Jewish philosophy but it is not a "Jewish" philosophy at all. It is something that Westernized Jews picked up from white Protestants, who were their heroes and idols. The much derided here "tikkun olam" (repair the world) was meant, in its original Jewish form, not to mean social activism but rather to refer to prayer and ritual observance. Its modern usage by the Jewish Left was meant to put a Jewish spin on very non-Jewish social activism, to make the pig kosher so to speak.

The Yiddish radio station in NY had the call sign "WEVD" in honor of their hero, the American democratic socialist Eugene V. Debs. Most of the program of the democratic socialists (40 hr work week, free public education etc.) was eventually picked up by the Democrat Party and became mainstream among Americans and not just Jews. The new immigrant American Jews did not take their role models from Jewish history nor from the bearded rebbes who concerned themselves with whether this or that defect made the chicken not kosher. They deemed this all irrelevant to their sweatshop working conditions and American labor leaders like Debs were the ones that guided them. Likewise, the Forverts (the largest Yiddish daily paper) was not modeled after anything in the Old Country but after American taibloids.

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Frank Herbert said in the Dune Chronicles that liberals are closet aristocrats... only THEY know what's best, they'll do what THEY think is best for YOU, despite any (racist, misogynistic, etc) misgivings you might have or protests you might undertake.

Truer words never written, IMO.

Efficiency in rulers –and therefore good record keeping —is an important historical point.
 

But my brother [i.e., Akhenaten] has not sent the solid [gold] statues that your father was going to send. You have sent plated ones of wood. Nor have you sent me the goods that your father was going to send me, but you have reduced [them] greatly. Yet there is nothing I know of in which I have failed my brother. ... May my brother send me much gold.
 

Replies: @R.G. Camara

What a great overview, thanks. It really irks me that I was never taught history in any way that was meaningful or memorable--except for a survey course my freshman year in college. It was "A History of Science", devised by UMKC's Dr. Norman Royally, Jr. It covered the Golden Mean, Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, numeric bases, etc. It was fascinating. We were told that college graduates of all disciplines routinely named it as their favorite, most informative course. We had to read Lynn White, Jr's Medieval Technology and Social Change, also fascinating, and the only textbook I saved from my college years.

Half a century later, I still look back on that course as one of the highlights of my life. It heightened my awareness of everything, through all of recorded history.

Your marvelous overview brought it all back. Thank you.

Actually, the argument today is that writing was invented first and foremost for governments to use to keep track of inventories and taxes and such.

For many millennia, kings and emperors and pharaohs found it expedient to keep track of who owned what and how much they owed, e.g. one of the major things that William the Conqueror did and is known for was the Doomsday Book, which recorded all land holdings in England after he conquered so he could properly tax everything; William was much more efficient at taxation than the previous Anglo-Saxon kings.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Domesday_Book

Very good leaders kept very detailed economic records like this for two reasons: (1) to maximize taxation; and (2) to keep a close eye on the economic power of local lords and merchants to make sure they didn't get enough wealth to threaten the crown.

Efficiency in rulers --and therefore good record keeping ---is an important historical point. One of Augustus's greatest accomplishments upon becoming the first Caesar was his efficiency reforms in Egypt. Egypt had always been wealthy, but Augustus fixed the ports on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean that had fallen into disrepair and cleaned up a lot of the corruption with grain dealing. Egypt became such a cash cow after that that Augustus made a law that the province of Egypt was a personal province ownned and governed personally by the Caesar, so as to prevent upstarts from becoming Egyptian governors and using the wealth to launch a coup. Augustus also tried reforming the corrupt tax-farming methods prevalent in the Near Eastern provinces (including Israel), which gained him popularity amongst the over-taxed locals.

Many other great leaders in history had very precise records, which allowed greater control, wealth, and power (e.g. thanks to her great record keeping, Elizabeth I caught Shakespeare's father dealing wool illegally, which caused him to lose his position as town mayor, become the town drunk, and cause Shakespeare to make it his life's mission to become a gentleman to make up for his father's shame).

Much of the earliest writing we've found in Crete (i.e. the great civilization that appears to either predate or exists alongside Egypt) was the kind of humdrum boring government-economic-taxes-trade kind. Linguistic carvings on statues and monuments was about the king's conquests or other great accomplishments, but writing on papyrus and other forms of proto-paper was first used for economic tracking. Quickbooks for the pre-internet world.

That said, it will be interesting to see what shakes out. Pompeii was a thriving port town so the recordings will likely give us a better sense of the economic wealth and the type of trade and entertainment in the town (rich people sponsored games and acting troupes).

Replies: @S, @Kylie

The word is “πορφυρας” which means ‘purple dye’ or ‘cloths of purple’.”

That word porphyrin is used today in organic chemistry to denote the class of compounds that give color to plants and animals. The famous ones being Chlorophyll and Hemoglobin for green and red colors.