20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Post-Literate Society
The big tech companies like to see themselves as invested in spreading knowledge and curiosity. In fact in order to survive they must promote stupidity. The tech oligarchs have just as much of a stake in the ignorance of the population as the most reactionary feudal autocrat. Dumb rage and partisan thinking keep us glued to our phones.
And where the old European monarchies had to (often ineptly) try to censor dangerously critical material, the big tech companies ensure our ignorance much mor...13 APR 2025 by ideonexus
"Having" Mode and "Being" Mode
The American essayist and biographer Agnes Repplier saw leisure as necessary for the completion not just of individuals but of civilizations. Leisure, she noted, “has a distinct and honorable place wherever nations are released from the pressure of their first rude needs, their first homely toil, and the rise of happier levels of grace and intellectual repose.” She believed that every investment and allowance should be made to support a leisure class—a fortunati—not so that its member...20 SEP 2024 by ideonexus
Pension-Fraud Correlated with Longevity
Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records. For example, the best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an ol...13 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Thar
There is, in my view, a direct correlation between the poverty of many societies and their tendency toward the thar mentality. Italy is a striking example. There is a remarkable north-south gradient of attitude and wealth in Italy; the far north is wealthy, highly industrialized, participated vigorously in the Renaissance, and is fully in the European mainstream. Although machismo is everywhere in Italy, in the north it rarely leads to anything more than loud exchanges in traffic. As you trav...Folksonomies: masculinity toxic masculinity
Folksonomies: masculinity toxic masculinity
27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Moderate Progressive Politics
We would, though, like to suggest that in some key areas, the people who are defining themselves as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — identified with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — are embracing principles that are not genuinely progressive.
Specifically: They want to enlarge government entitlements and hand out the benefits as broadly as possible — free college, free health care, expanded Social Security — regardless of need or available r...01 MAR 2016 by ideonexus
"Idiocracy" is a Problematic Anti-Poor Film
Unlike other films that satirize the media and the soul-crushing consequences of sensationalized entertainment (my personal favorite being 1951's Ace in the Hole), Idiocracy lays the blame at the feet of an undeserved target (the poor) while implicitly advocating a terrible solution (eugenics). The movie’s underlying premise is a fundamentally dangerous and backwards way to understand the world.
The origin story for Idiocracy’s future world of half-wits is that uneducated people in the e...Folksonomies: intelligence criticism
Folksonomies: intelligence criticism