mats: narcissist despises you for loving them back, but can't go without it
signpost: could be all their was, can't say.
signpost: *there
phf: signpost: oh i got it, i was reflecting on what to say, because i had further thoughts on the subject. i'll just say that i don't think that pianos are coming back
adlai: ... is this "bitcoin kills art" again?
adlai: one of MP's posts about Bitcoin, and iirc one where I commented similarly to right here, included "Art" as one of the things Bitcoin kills; double-quoted, because that was the entire line.
adlai: followed by some paragraph of trilema that, honestly, was much less informative than most.
adlai: ... there is a trilema archive somewhere other than archive.top-level-domain, yes?
adlai: fwiw, after visiting Slovenia, one of my comments to kako was along the lines of "next time I visit, maybe I'll stay long enough to visit a church where there is a church organ"
adlai does not recall whether comment involved "I will make them hate J.S.Bach again"
phf: adlai: i think there was a log thread like that
adlai: is there still a search command in the channel?
signpost: better to just go search and drop a line.
adlai does have a multiplexer!
signpost: phf: it's alright with me if there's 300 years of the wave receding from here.
signpost: wasn't going to get me out of here alive in either case.
phf: i'm just drinking beer and playing my part in maintaining a low s/n
signpost: not terribly noisy atm imho.
signpost: do you mean broadly that european culture's irreparable? or something else?
signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/trilema/2017-02-03#1611103 << bwahahaha oh god
dulapbot: (trilema) 2017-02-03 mircea_popescu: then have him drop his pants to check, and cut off his penis once the inevitable COLORED ; WEIRD pair of GIRL panties shows up.
signpost: I know he was a bastard, but this shit was top comedy.
adlai: one problem with the dude ranting endlessly in both IRC and his blog is that I can't recall where I encountered the dangling thread to which I did not respond.
adlai: if only at least one of us permanently refused to use IRC!
phf: signpost: i think that european culture died with the death of god, and as a result the death of the aristocracy, after that we had a few decades where sons or grandsons, the people who still remembered played their part. you know dressed well, and had their morning brandy or whatever. the "mad men"/"james bond" period of history, basically already bourgeoisie, but still living in the old world.
adlai: brief search expedition suggests that the line I sought was also in trilema; this was one similar to, "there is a reason guitars are popular", followed by change of subject without anyone asking what the one notable reason was, in MP's opinion.
signpost: phf: what of the idea that "god" was this superlative man we could stop crying and carry on writing about?
phf: i mean five course meal is a larp, there's maybe a handful of restaurants in the world where they know what to do with the silverware, or how to act. it's all like make believe. it's the same with piano: there were some highly established men, wrote poetry, rode horses into battle, hunted, and to entertain themselves they played piano. so it's like you play a piece when you're 18, it's a whole different story from when you're 38, but
phf: it's the same person playing. and the people you're playing it to are you equals
phf: who even listens to piano pieces anymore? some npr bugmen listen to a chinawoman?
signpost listens to Maurizio Pollini often.
signpost: and not among the NPR'd
signpost: but who? rounds to zero, sure.
adlai: "advice for young musicians? do not play instrumental [i.e. non-vocal, non-lyrical] music" - iirc, one of the folks in Metallica
adlai: I don't doubt they could give the typical 'instrumental metal' band a good fight, yet they rarely include more than, idk, ten minutes, without resuming their ranting.
adlai more familiar with the records than the shows, fwiw.
adlai: obviously the word 'fight' means different things in different contexts!
adlai goes focus the wet blanket of his sobriety, elsewhere;... goodnight, America[ns]
phf: signpost: yeah but you listen to basically how pollini felt in 1959 or whatever over and over and over again. and then the other question can you actually understand how pollini felt through his particular interpretation or is it just "lovely music". i know i can't :)
signpost: we don't disagree that we're in the midst of a fall.
phf: most people for whom that music was compose could also play it, so it wasn't just listening, it was listening with a professional's ear. "oh that's a very sad take, but that's because your beloved died from plague my dearest richard" or whatever
phf: but the men who participated in this experince were fucking /complex/. they rode, and managed estates, and participated in warfare, and were expected to play music and read literature. because they had money and time, but also a social role that compeled to spend that money and that time on this sort of activities
signpost: I am a brute compared to any of these.
signpost: the future is brutal.
signpost: we'll likely exhaust this planet of what ran modernity and collapse into something that can't remember it.
signpost: that said, I hear much in that music. it isn't an affectation.
phf: i started reflecting on this as a result of two things: i reread a handful of classic russian literature books, war and piece, hero of our time by lermontov, some tolstoy short stories, that kind of stuff, and i started riding in earnest, and i sort of realized that our distance from our quite recent past is immense.
signpost nods
signpost: steps back out of this poverty are going to look crude.
signpost: some would rather slip into the sea.
phf: signpost: btw not doubting at all your enjoyment of classical music
signpost: nah, this is a worthwhile topic.
phf: also apropos http://btcbase.org/log/2014-07-23#764926
signpost sees it, but does not resign to it, is all.
phf: yeah nor am i, i'm just no longer necessarily looking for the eldorado, certainly not in the old world. austro hungarian architecture is great and all, but it's inhabited by cockroaches.
signpost: man in the limit might not care about those things either.
signpost: if that algo results in cycles of civilizational destruction every 3-5k/yrs, say, to hell with it, and the pianos.
phf: like wien's innere stadt area, it's all historic buildings, but it's basically a giant mall. i've spent a lot of time there during tmsr, and a bit in the past two years. and it's a pretty common experience: wherever you go, where there are "old buildings", natives pretend like they are somehow part of it, like living amongst ruins of greater culture elevates them, but it doesn't.
phf: signpost: ride the kali yuga :p
signpost googles briefly, looks like hindu cyclical time, presently a dark age.
signpost: oldest example of which I'm aware for the "important because we nested in these buildings" thing is egypt
phf: don't have direct experience of egypt, but had it recently with turks
signpost: upstack, much of the maurizio pollini I enjoy is chopin and debussy.
signpost: just taking chopin's melancholy, makes perfect sense to me, every layer.
signpost: but this is well later than the bombast of whichever german empire.
signpost hasn't much nostalgia or connection to these. might as well be chinese history.
phf: i like the romantists, easier for me to feel connected to them because that's the most well studied period in russian history
verisimilitude: I'm learning Latin; many important men are said to have learned Latin; highschool students are said to have learned Latin; how well did they truly know Latin, however?
verisimilitude: Plenty of men know Latin, but can't actually speak it in real-time.
verisimilitude: I'll just do my best.
phf: i at some point knew enough latin to read ovid
signpost: "does the ideal man stop learning because there exist men who have already learned more than he has time or context to achieve?"
signpost: verisimilitude: is this a fair rendering of your point?
signpost: if so, it's exactly what I mean re: thinking in terms of the superlative man.
verisimilitude: No.
verisimilitude: I question how great those men were.
signpost: then it's what you should mean!
signpost: :D
verisimilitude: I certainly agree with it anyway.
verisimilitude: The word ``certainly'' in Latin is CERTĒ.
phf: verisimilitude: so my school was just a parody of what the real thing was supposed to be, but i will say that we could read latin well enough to spend time searching through ovid for smutt, or sign gaudeamus igitur from memory while also understanding what i'm singing (there's a handful of other hymns)
phf: so i'm certain that men who studied it and then had opportunity to use it would've been quite proficient at it
verisimilitude: That may be; either way, I must become better.
signpost: verisimilitude: why?
signpost hitting the hay. gnite all.
phf: later
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092882 << can only speak for self, but tho asciilifeform has 0 connection to any kinda aristocracy, e.g. can tell actual food from ersatz, tho gives 0 damn re whether forks arranged correctly; never touched a horse, but wrote/translated poetries; even enjoys to listen to piano, go figure. the larps are orthogonal to this.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:23:31 phf: i mean five course meal is a larp, there's maybe a handful of restaurants in the world where they know what to do with the silverware, or how to act. it's all like make believe. it's the same with piano: there were some highly established men, wrote poetry, rode horses into battle, hunted, and to entertain themselves they played piano. so it's like you play a piece when you're 18, it's a whole different story from when you're 38, but
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092896 << the aristos imho poor 'role models' given as they did over9000 things because expected to participate in 'tea ceremonies', rather than because enjoyed. ( and when 'do what enjoy', often enuff spent the time in drink, 'ru roulette', mp-style debauchery. )
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:31:05 phf: but the men who participated in this experince were fucking /complex/. they rode, and managed estates, and participated in warfare, and were expected to play music and read literature. because they had money and time, but also a social role that compeled to spend that money and that time on this sort of activities
asciilifeform: observe that the composers/artists and the aristos were largely disjoint sets.
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092912 << this -- entirely factual ( and recall, mp went on for kilometres about it. ) again can speak only for self, but asciilifeform enjoys the old stones ( partly nostalgically, spent most of childhood in & among'em ).
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:43:06 phf: like wien's innere stadt area, it's all historic buildings, but it's basically a giant mall. i've spent a lot of time there during tmsr, and a bit in the past two years. and it's a pretty common experience: wherever you go, where there are "old buildings", natives pretend like they are somehow part of it, like living amongst ruins of greater culture elevates them, but it doesn't.
asciilifeform: and yes, having'em doesn't turn the inhabitants into sumthing other than homo redditus. but asciilifeform did not suffer from this illusion.
asciilifeform grew up with actual piano in the house, too ( tho mother wouldn't teach him , 'if you were mozart, it'd be obvious', today denies this, 'you didn't want')
asciilifeform: and 4 metre ceiling, lol
asciilifeform: i suppose we were , to speak, 'aristocrats', tho what sense does it make to talk aboutta country w/ 100mil 'aristocrats'.
asciilifeform: certainly no one was in the sense of mp's 'larp'.
PeterL: I have a piano in my house
asciilifeform: PeterL: pianos still avail., phf was speaking of 'death of culture' as i understand
PeterL: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-04#1092509 << here in Michigan, if somebody asks where you are from you are expected to point to the correct part of your upraised right palm (cause our state looks like a mitten)
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-04 21:20:30 adlai: was inspired by "french schoolchildren learn to draw a hexagon before they learn to condescend at english speakers"
PeterL: (I live about an inch left from the bottom of the space between your thumb and first finger)
PeterL: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-04#1092537 << kids these days get their history from the musical "Hamilton", so they all know how he negotiated to get his way on something by letting the Virginians stick the capitol in the swamp close by
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-04 21:34:28 adlai: as for the location of the federal government, my impression was always that it was simply "what is median of ex-colonial coastline", rather than "walking distance from most beautiful plantation"
asciilifeform doesn't begrudge folx the pleasure of masturbating to mythos of 'golden age civ' but reserves right to lol when the subjects of the fantasy are mutually annihilatory and heavily airbrushed
dulapbot: Logged on 2020-06-08 11:27:33 asciilifeform: to give concrete example -- non-debased currency and freedom of commerce; but also somehow at same time feudal-style hereditary nobility. ignoring the historical fact that the former , on planet3, nailed the latter
dulapbot: Logged on 2020-06-08 12:17:41 asciilifeform: the chronology (either 'fr rev started destruction of sovereignty' or the 'diet of worms' one, he had at least 2) imho was just as selective a reading of actual events as what was taught at sovok schools. (albeit 'with sign bit flipped.')
asciilifeform: in ru this kinda fantasism is memetically known as 'хруст французской булки' ('the crunch of the french baguette')
adlai: honestly, I think most of my decade-later takeaway from both US history classes, and Latin classes, is that the practical benefit of studying "dead" languages is that you can compose opinions about a complicated sentence without recoursing to a page of single-clause sentences, with antecedents left as puzzles for the reader.
adlai never had much trouble reading the prose of various 'founding' documents, and had more problems with producing the demanded volume of _edited_ prose; and thanks taking Latin classes before failing history classes for the good side of this.
adlai: I'm not quite at the point of declaring 'academic honesty', in the way it's taught to high school students, as worse than useless; however, it does definitely get in the way of the simplest instructions for turning five hours of reading primary sources into five pages of informed opinion.
adlai: these are quite literally, "copy the primary source; then, fuzz what you want to pass off as your own ideas using thesaurus, equivalent grammar, etc, and delete what is too stupid or obvious to be worth stealing"
adlai: somehow no teacher ever gives instructions like this! it's always closer to "keep reading, until twenty pages of garbage opinion appear; then, distill five pages of gold, slap on two pages of quoted sources, and distill again."
adlai: then again, I was busy disappointing so many simultaneous expectations in those years, it's no surprise that I had difficulty complaining about the expectations of folks who weren't there to defend themselves.
adlai wonders whether there's an erythrochigan, where the folks can crack "know this place like the back of my hand" jokes
adlai: joking aside, geography is useful and I was surprised to discover that in Israel some folks do part of their high school specialisation in 'geography'
adlai: when I first heard this, upon returning, it simply did not parse. "you learned what, how to read a map?"
adlai also thought he understood calculus after passing the AP exam. what gives.
adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092901 << I found the opening chapters of W&P somewhat too... sitcommish? for me, when I gave it a first chance. It was like getting hit with an opening scene to a shakespeare play that begins with entry of every single character listed, and then they all talk past eachother about their problems.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:34:46 phf: i started reflecting on this as a result of two things: i reread a handful of classic russian literature books, war and piece, hero of our time by lermontov, some tolstoy short stories, that kind of stuff, and i started riding in earnest, and i sort of realized that our distance from our quite recent past is immense.
adlai: so far my russian literature familiarity is a teeeeny bit of dostoevsky, bulgakov, and finding myself mentally and physically incapable to continue reading an english translation of zamyatin.
adlai: I dunno if the translator of zamyatin was trying intentionally to make it read like 19th century english, instead of simply writing for a late 20th / early 21st century audience.
adlai: maybe zamyatin's original prose is all flushed and blustery and can't even get through one tweet without popping a raging boner. somehow I couldn't get through one book without leaving it in a "take a book, leave a book" shelf.
adlai is referring to "We"
adlai: the translation was no more alluring by the fact that the preface began with, approximately, "I had been seeking a reason to read this book, and finally, I'm getting paid to translate it to English! yay"
adlai: otoh, the translations of dostoevsky and bulgakov were both readable, as though written directly in English and only incidentally set in white/red russia.
adlai found some old scan of bulgakov in russian. probably more readable, once ready to read prose, than the only dead-tree 'book' in 'russian' in my library... the navoya zavet, of course.
adlai: upstack re:pianos - I think one great problem is the treatment of music as sacrament.
adlai: this is of course entirely fueled by my own personal angst, at having plenty of music lessons on execution before ever opening a web browser and reading about theory instead of doing schoolwork.
adlai: don't get me wrong, music is a wonderful cultural glue and social lubricant; yet, opening a dictionary and robotically concluding that music is religious, by virtue of binding together ... it is a stretch.
PeterL: adlai: what do you mean by treating music as sacrament?
adlai: the best example is anthems.
adlai: for example, in Israel, you're not supposed to sing the anthem just cus you wanna practice singing the anthem.
adlai: nobody would tell you to stop singing; however, it'd be similar to someone setting down prayer mats in the middle of an airport concourse, instead of in the room designated as the chapel.
PeterL: you mean just walking down the street in public, or you don't even practice the song when alone?
adlai: fwiw, I'm uncertain whether this is cultural leftovers of the grand european 'cathedral', where the pinnacle of music is the most expensive productions, in the most expensive halls; or whether what I described as "treating music as sacrament" is something older than pianos, older than Latin, possibly older than written history.
adlai: well, it's not sung at soccer games. typically it's sung at memorial times; e.g. individual funerals, holocaust rememberance, etc.
asciilifeform: world's most depressing anthem afaik
adlai: it is also sung at some national events (independence day celebrations, duh), and quite frequently sung near the end of big organized social protests to emphasize that the protest is not anti-government, and merely anti-current-politicians.
adlai: asciilifeform: lol yes!
adlai: that is why I like it.
asciilifeform also likes
asciilifeform: famously was sung by prisoners as they were gassed, by various accounts
adlai: it's not "antland antland", it's more "the world is still terrible, have you ever read greek mythology?"
asciilifeform: aha
adlai never been quite so asphixiated, can't attest to credibility of that legend.
asciilifeform: reportedly they were able to get through 1-2 verses
adlai: military simulation of chemical warfare is naturally nowhere close to the real thing.
asciilifeform: singing in gas mask prolly unsatisfying
adlai: that is child's play, and tbh one of the quickest ways to lose respect for a CO
adlai: most people raise their voices to "shout through", instead of projecting.
adlai: the masks I've used always had a dedicated diaphragm for e.g. holding against microphone when talking on a radio; my guess is that even through masks without this, the vocal technique is no different.
adlai: it boils down to "imitate monotonic droning of tracheotomy prosthetic"
adlai: slightly different from projecting, as taught to stage actors; yet much more similar to that, than to the hoarse squaking that somehow most people do the moment an exercise goes masks-on.
adlai: however, by 'military simulation', I meant simulation of asphixiating gas without masks, or detecting a leaky mask, etc.
adlai was not specialist, maybe they got more serious training
asciilifeform: a, 'gas tent'
adlai: right. it was unpleasant, yet not incapacitating, and commanders ordered each soldier out pretty much the moment they became visibly ridiculous (tears, snot, etc)
adlai has been pepper sprayed; much worse.
adlai: one surprising fact of my own neurology, that I learned after the immediate symptoms of the spray reduced enough that I could see clearly, was that the 'overflow' of pain went to the sensation of cold, rather than hot.
asciilifeform: common enuff in e.g. burn victims
adlai: for some reason I expected it to be a burning pain, similar to eating spicy food, or sunburn.
adlai: maybe it is a compensation by some intermediate circuit.
asciilifeform: nfi how it worx, perhaps a meat equiv. of register overflow.
adlai: I guess my point about music is that placing it on a pedestal, once you've taken down all the animist and deist idolatry, might blind you to the power that it has.
adlai: no radio DJ, or advertising composer, has any doubts about this power; yet lots of people (me included) follow music similarly to how pollinating insects follow smells.
adlai can ignore some symptoms of first-world other-people's-problemsism without missing one step, yet reflexively pauses to listen to music, and it takes conscious effort to suppress this
adlai: asciilifeform: ever get told by the Microsoft Paperclip that "It's never too late to learn to play the piano!"
adlai: ?
adlai recalls one long conversation with a fellow who, at a relatively late age, decided to learn an instrument, after never playing music
asciilifeform theoretically would liketo learn a lotta things. but notenuff cycles.
adlai: his teacher had him learn one piece. instead of launching him on the same set of lessons you'd give a child, he simply gave him, iirc, the cello part of a sonata, and had him spend a year practicing each of the various techniques relevant for each part.
adlai: at the end of the year, "cool, you are now able to play! let nobody ever tell you that you are unable to play music."
adlai: instead of, after one year, you can, what... read, and play half a dozen scales. blech.
adlai had one teacher who recommended studying scales at the pace of one per year... if I'd listened, then I'd have run out of scales by now!
adlai has told worse jokes, although not many.
adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092901 << have you considered studying one of the modern daughter languages in parallel to studying Latin?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:34:46 phf: i started reflecting on this as a result of two things: i reread a handful of classic russian literature books, war and piece, hero of our time by lermontov, some tolstoy short stories, that kind of stuff, and i started riding in earnest, and i sort of realized that our distance from our quite recent past is immense.
adlai: err, crap. wrong link.
asciilifeform: adlai: iirc he knows several quite well
adlai mistakenly hallucinated having updated paste buffer to point at...
adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092923 << have you considered studying a modern language in parallel to latin?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 01:00:01 verisimilitude: Plenty of men know Latin, but can't actually speak it in real-time.
adlai: Mircea naturally recommended Romanian as the least drifted daughter language.
asciilifeform learned ro well enuff to get by in ro and even read most of mp's spew; would not describe it as 'less drifted' than e.g. sp
adlai had learned French up to reasonable gossipping level, even wrote one page article about Dr. Guillotine's Marvellous Machine, before ever starting to study latin
adlai: my Latin teachers never expected students to speak in Latin during class, and only one of them even encouraged this, at a 'conversational latin club' that mostly consisted of him chatting with a few of the most proficient students while everyone else listened.
adlai: my point here is that having conversational proficiency as a goal is problematic when you don't have interlocutors.
adlai: this does however smell a bit like "learn lisp for the insight, then keep writing java at work, except your java will secretly be lisp that you compile-by-hand to java"
asciilifeform: lol
asciilifeform regards 'learn xyz for teh insight!' as cargocultistic, virtually no one does any such thing to any degree seriously
adlai: in recent years I have a growing respect for the Arabic approach, where there is a standard written language that is not considered identical to any individual nation's speech; and there are standard pronounciations of the sacred text, for those who wish to speak ancient text rather than silently reading.
adlai: it seems to be quite an honest result from the difficulties of recording what anyone will admit were originally spoken revelations, as opposed to some revealed sacred item.
adlai: apparently, there was a short while, before the Qur'an was recorded as written text, when this was considered a bad idea, because most of the followers were illiterate, so the written text would not be readily useful to them!
adlai still can't even claim full literacy of the Arabic alphabet; as with any natural language, practicing by reading names in street signs does not give good coverage of the entire script.
adlai snoozes; sadly, can not expect encountering Godhead, or foreign planet, in dreams... most common recurring dream, is losing teeth
asciilifeform: meanwhile anuther 'silk road' bites it. 'run moar tor'.
asciilifeform: this particular 1 was mega-popular in ru.
asciilifeform: $ticker btc eur
busybot: Current BTC price in EUR: $42134.08
asciilifeform: ^ claimed '23e6 eur worth of btc confiscated' , i.e. ~546 btc then.
asciilifeform wonders whether rectothermally or simply kept in gox. would bet -- the latter
verisimilitude: I imagine conversations, adlai. Just tonight, I was talking to churchgoers about PASTOR meaning shepherd and using it in various ways, as I was falling asleep; I don't even like churchgoers.
verisimilitude: Well, last night.
verisimilitude: My dogs are good listeners, but they never correct my mistakes.
PeterL: verisimilitude: why do you always put the latin words in all caps?
verisimilitude: The Romans didn't have lowercase letters, silly.
verisimilitude: I already do this with Common Lisp; it's REDUCE, not reduce.
mats: new toys for ukraine https://archive.ph/3YlSR
asciilifeform: mats: lol, 10?!
asciilifeform: miserly
asciilifeform wonders what the rest of the hyped $1e9 reich goodies for ukrs consist of... over9000 old wehrmacht uniforms ?
asciilifeform recently lolled, walking through the street in town where old white folx live, saw coupla performative ukr flags; these were made of some kinda see-through gauze
asciilifeform: prolly come for phree w/ dnc donations nao.
mats: i think i read somewhere the smaller ones are $6k
asciilifeform considered to knock on door and 'ще не вмерла україна...' but doubt they'd sing along
mats: pretty good pricing compared to a dji phantom
asciilifeform: mats: similar but non-lockheed-priced item used since '14 by both sides, model airplane + frag
mats: its all electric though
asciilifeform: iirc the cheapo ones already were electric
asciilifeform: might wonder how small bomb bots handle jamming ( they dun have the bulk to carry 'predator'-style upwards pointing sat dish thing , nor would reich likely give ukrs subscription to their bw , barely enuff for selves )
asciilifeform: prolly worx great against pashtun-type folx w/out ew gear.
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093063 << the lispms had proper lower case. ( legend has it, 'dark age' irons which had only enuff rom for 1 font case, initially were to have the moar readable lower, but some churchgoing type objected, 'we oughtnt write the lord's name in lowercase'...)
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 16:03:00 verisimilitude: I already do this with Common Lisp; it's REDUCE, not reduce.
asciilifeform: at any rate had 0 to do w/ rome.
shinohai shakes fist at Green letters on Black background that represented lowercase in TRS80 BASIC ....
vex: .au is loading up a globamaster with bushmasters for .ua
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-04 21:28:21 signpost: also had several beers this afternoon with his other favorite j00
vex sends big love
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092963 << ftr, i'm not defending or glorifying aristocracy, but i'm saying that you can't have some things while having other things. it's possible that non-debased currency and freedom of commerce are not compatible with high culture
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 11:44:33 asciilifeform: in ru this kinda fantasism is memetically known as 'хруст французской булки' ('the crunch of the french baguette')
phf: the french baguette (i also like the term "grandma's silver spoons") is particularly noxious. it's basically peasants trying to tie their family's history to aristocracy, because life in soviet union was otherwise so unremarkable, having a secret family history was a kind of "i'm actually a princess, but was raised by peasants" kind of juvenile story telling
phf: it usually comes from people that somehow managed to combine aspirations to high culture with routine personal debasement
phf: in a way aristo requires a minority to convince the majority that they deserve (first by divine right and then by birth right) to recieve dispraportionate amount of resource, without necessarily generating corresponding economic activiity
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093086 << possibly -- and possibly not. asciilifeform's pt was that oughtn't be so quick to think that we even know why we ~had~ highculture to start with. and what turned off the tap.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 21:40:42 phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092963 << ftr, i'm not defending or glorifying aristocracy, but i'm saying that you can't have some things while having other things. it's possible that non-debased currency and freedom of commerce are not compatible with high culture
phf: asciilifeform: i'm fairly convinced that it was a product of multi generational leisure class, but i'm open to alternative theories
asciilifeform: so for instance atm (while petrosupplies last..) we actually have the mechanical civ basis for mass leisure class. simply most of the 'leisure' is covered up with bizarre makework where deskflyers 'write tps reports'. conceivably one day could dispense w/ the pretense. but rulers impose the makework, suspect, largely on acct of 'keeping lid on consumption', given as otherwise [http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/trilema/201
asciilifeform: 7-02-19#1615564]['the swine will overconsume']. but is bulk of bipeds necessarily swine ? imho unknown
asciilifeform: grr fucked link
asciilifeform: let's try that again
asciilifeform: ... as otherwise 'the swine will overconsume'. but is bulk of bipeds necessarily swine ? imho unknown
dulapbot: (trilema) 2017-02-19 mircea_popescu: !~google "viermi neadormiti"
asciilifeform: in e.g. current usa, maybe 10-20% of adult inhabitants in any way involved w/ keeping the physical plant going.
phf: possibly that my statement was incomplete, and you need other elements besides leisure, that are at present missing. i don't know how else to account for funkopop marvel generation.
vex: there's always been bullshit, most of it prolly doesn't get transcoded into the pages of history
mats: did anyone ever really have non debased currency
vex: "i'd be an earl if it wern't for the revolution"
phf: vex: man that's the same angle that asciilifeform is taking, and that's not what i'm ranting about. i'm lamenting about the bifurcation of human experience. either an egghead who knows life from books, or man of action who doesn't know his scylla from charybdis. i simply want other men in my life who both read the classics, and can go hunting from horseback :>
vex: you're a lord in my book phf
mats: it'd just get replaced over time with copper, or reissued with bronze core, or some shit like that
vex: things change quickly sometimes. your kids might me in charge of an asteroid mining op
phf: or i may simply be a single drop of rain, but i will remain
vex: sounds like 200 μg
phf: vex: i don't get the reference
vex: common lsd dose, i'm being silly as is my want
phf: yeah i figured it out eventually :D
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093105 << outta curiosity, why 'hunting, on horse' and not, say, 'flying biplane' ?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 22:15:43 phf: vex: man that's the same angle that asciilifeform is taking, and that's not what i'm ranting about. i'm lamenting about the bifurcation of human experience. either an egghead who knows life from books, or man of action who doesn't know his scylla from charybdis. i simply want other men in my life who both read the classics, and can go hunting from horseback :>
asciilifeform: or, for that matter, how come 'life' is 'hunting on horseback' rather than e.g. drilling for natgas
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093101 << right, was what asciilifeform was getting at. it aint the leisure, per se. plenty of folx w/ all the leisure anyone could want, and not producing anyffin of even passing interest.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 22:01:22 phf: possibly that my statement was incomplete, and you need other elements besides leisure, that are at present missing. i don't know how else to account for funkopop marvel generation.
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093114 << flying biplanes or drilling for natgas are also acceptable
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 22:28:42 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1093105 << outta curiosity, why 'hunting, on horse' and not, say, 'flying biplane' ?
asciilifeform: imho the q of why 'eggheads' not drilling for natgas, or working as geologist like e.g. efremov -- or the converse q, why gas drillers not writing epic novels -- is answerable.
vex: not enuff cycles?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-01-25 19:23:44 asciilifeform: lizards in usa 'solved' the 'unions problem' by getting rid of labour, creating caste of lumpens on left side of bell curve and caste of paper shufflers on right side, with the sleight-of-hand moar than sufficing to ramp down expectations of life for all of'em
asciilifeform: i.e. successful imposition of a rigid caste society.
asciilifeform: su offered history's only alternative, and nao that it went to /dev/null, we're back to the 'egyptian' system, with peons, priests, and little cross traffic
phf: i knew a handful of biplane people, and they were very salt of earth. dks is one of them, and he's an army man, smart, shrewd operator, but not much into classics
asciilifeform: right, he's a kshatriya
asciilifeform knows several.
asciilifeform: phf: any idea whether d00d is still alive, incidentally ?
phf: he is, i visited him in oct
asciilifeform noticed his ebay shop empty for ~2y nao, hence the q
asciilifeform: possibly asciilifeform bought his last remaining stock
mats: whats so manly about flying a biplane
mats: risky truck driving?
asciilifeform: mats: if 'manly' has a meaning, and it dun include biplane, then nfi what it could mean
asciilifeform: or per mats's lights, requires a ww1 to fly it in ? or wat
vex: hey mats, bosch make an excellent electic oven
asciilifeform: lol
vex: seriously
phf: asciilifeform: his remaining stock requires technical and engineering skill to get to a packaged state
mats: in a thousand years men will be wistfully chatting about how there aren't any men hopping from rock to rock in nothing more than an aluminium can, a tank of air, and gravity assist
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-03-28 10:18:19 asciilifeform: has 5 'ivory' cpu stashed, 4 of'em brand-new, for microscopy, for which to this day 0 time/budget
mats: fucking fags and their epstein drives
asciilifeform: (arguably in this category)
asciilifeform: mats: archaic tech tends to be moar accessible and moar 'athletic' obv.
asciilifeform: moar folx flying 'cessna' than mig, recreationally
phf: e.g. board with falty pals. there's a pal programmer, there's a original lisp code to upload necessary bit map onto pal, there's even reference pals to clone. there's only one person (two if you count myself) who can do this operation and you've met him that one time.
phf: *boards
asciilifeform: phf: lulzily asciilifeform set up to burn ( & even bruteforce-reverse ) pals/gals in '19. but notenuffcycles grr
asciilifeform: there's a large, for the period, cpld on the ivory3 which is annoying.
dulapbot: Logged on 2020-02-04 20:41:34 asciilifeform: what it did not include, was any info on the supporting peripherals present on the 'ivory' board. in particular, there's a 1200 gate cpld, which interfaces the thing to the old apple bus; and also some GALs
mats: i'm just having fun, no debate intended
mats: was never a scholar-horseman, classics don't interest me anymore and horses have a tightly linked mental association with parasite class that loves watching Yellowstone and owning hobby farms
asciilifeform concurs re horse. very strong assoc. in his head as described by mats
asciilifeform interested in classics but has 0 pretense to be a serious scholar of subj and does not expound, a la mp, about it
phf: there's not surprisingly not that many classics buffs at mma schools, or customizing cars for offroading, or ricer, or hunting, or ... communities either.
vex also not clasiclly read
asciilifeform: phf: 'не по масти'. usa -- caste society.
phf: in fact having read ancient mythology strongly implies love for science and extensive knowledge of marvel universe!
asciilifeform: at this pt, in usa, having read anyffin other than a street sign, likely does, lol
phf: shit fuck classics, falkner? scott fitzgerald? 19th century american frontier writers, like what's his name jack london?
mats: half the time i hear or read someone referencing the classics, its from an insufferable twat like verisimilitude
asciilifeform: 'read? as in fuckingbooks? like fags?' -- prolly erry natgas driller in reich naodays
mats: exactly
asciilifeform: mats: see, this is how you get an india.
phf: mats: yeah, people like verisimilitude don't help
vex: i thought he was autistic, but possibly skitz
mats: i don't give him credit like that
asciilifeform: tight-lipped fella, but gives reasons to suspect lol
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-03-31 19:49:19 asciilifeform: mats: fwiw asciilifeform's guess was terrydavis pension, lol. but we won't know unless fella spills
asciilifeform: phf: the 'bifurcation' is interesting imho. e.g., most folx one runs into in usa who 'friends with books', seem otherwise complete invalids, and not even speaking of 'not flies biplane' or 'not customizes racecars' but folx helpless even to cement a hole in their wall w/ own hands.
dulapbot: Logged on 2021-07-11 18:56:29 asciilifeform: i learned that in usa there are households where there is no hammer.
asciilifeform: and conversely.
phf: asciilifeform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQkZzgXw_G8
asciilifeform: lol!
asciilifeform: phf: this prolly exactly how typical reich inmate sees subj
asciilifeform: 'when i hear word 'culture', i cock my browning'(tm)(r)
vex: mp went to some law lectures. remember this one
vex: it's not my story, i think he extected some sluts and that was it
vex: *extracted
vex: maybe he learned enough and fucked off somewhere. i never saw the corpse
vex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA644rSZX1A to be fair, I never saw the mna
vex: *man