Show Idle (>14 d.) Chans
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dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-05-28 phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-28#1104038 << i've seen you make this point already, but also consider that work by its very nature is a loathsome affair, even when "take pride" and "born for it". the anarchist bob black has a quote that i like, that work starts when play becomes compulsory. never the less a lathe machinist slacks by shooting shit with coworkers, or drinking beer in the break room, not e.g. going to
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 15:04:36 phf[deedbot]: but i find all kinds of questions unanswered, like why rhodesia, how does information velocity factor into this, what's the essence of wokeism, how does "cellphone in every pocket" factor into this, why open borders, why modern holywood, why no "build in garage" culture, etc.
crtdaydreams[asciilifeform]: On the flipside, especially evidient within my generation is "why bother?", only a couple clicks away from watching someone else do it. Other than that, can opt for other cheap forms of escape, e.g. vr, vidya games, netflix, endless scroooooll. Keyword is "escape"; why give a shit when brainwashed into "[insert generic dis
crtdaydreams[asciilifeform]: tant catastrophe here] going to end us all eventually, why do anything that
crtdaydreams[asciilifeform]: isn't a dopaminergic"
crtdaydreams[asciilifeform]: which is possibly not a dissimilar view from "fall of rome" but simliarities end with hedonism. e.g. now run into "how to fit lathe in 2nd story dorm room" so instead opt to buy 3D printer and make PLA ironman funkopop that someone posted the slicer files on makerspace
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 15:01:08 phf[deedbot]: i think the kinds of analogies are insufficient for an explanation of modernity. like you can reduce locklin to "wokes took over science", then your analogy can be reduced to an eqaully popular meme of "we living through fall of rome"
phf: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1020948 << from the cutoff it's not obvious if you're referencing bob black's zerowork or the gamification of the internet, because both points are made in the original
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-05-28 phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-05-28#1104038 << i've seen you make this point already, but also consider that work by its very nature is a loathsome affair, even when "take pride" and "born for it". the anarchist bob black has a quote that i like, that work starts when play becomes compulsory. never the less a lathe machinist slacks by shooting shit with coworkers, or drinking beer in the break room, not e.g. going to
phf: bob black places his zerowork ideas in historic context. he's influenced by 1970s new wave of anthropology, where educated post-hippies revived the noble savage myth, and argued that primitive man's life was not short and brutal, but was actually mostly lazy and fun.
phf: so when i bring up bob black it's mostly to acknowledge that nobody and any point of time wanted to work. that a base man's natural inclanation is to either play a fiddle by a shack or take it a step further and go be merry men in the sherwood forest
phf: i guess come to think of it your elaboration covers both cases, because in the original you're quoting i'm also wondering about all the high dopamine activities that have replaced "playing a fiddle"
phf: but here's a thing, bob black's ideas are basically timeless, where's high dopamine activities are the past 10 years
phf: still doesn't explain for example why the west decided to destroy rhodesia where i think the "das racis" proto-playbook was established http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2022-07-28#1010582
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-07-28 00:27:53 phf[awt]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2022-07-27#1010560 << like i've mentioned before, i've been studying subj. on account of first known to me case of das racis!1 being used as weapon. but specifically why “build rhodesia” because of how fervently patriotic rhodesians were. were building
phf: because, and this is an attempt to make a satisfying grand theory of everything, this also ties to e.g. recent thread about finland, the disappearance of hacker spaces and therefore disappearance of hacker culture
asciilifeform: phf: iirc the rm -rf'ing of rhodesia started as classical us/su proxy war
phf[asciilifeform]: asciilifeform, that's not correct
asciilifeform distinctly recalled story of vietnam-style 'communist'/'anticommunist'(tm) civil war
asciilifeform: but no ?
phf[asciilifeform]: not at all
asciilifeform: phf: know of a decent source re subj ?
phf: asciilifeform, unfortunately no. there's a lot of youtube videos of e.g. bbc or us media doing coverage of rhodesia, and then the bush war, and you can read up on key events of the war itself in e.g. new york times articles. nyt keeps archives of its published articles way into 1950s
phf: and then there's a lot books, but they are kind of a slog, poorly edited, mostly self-published accounts from participants. i have a small backlog bulk of which is published in south africa and nowhere else, but i don't think that even in that pile there will be "the definitive guide"
phf: 􏿽but to the vietnam point, it was not a proxy war at all, and that's a non-controversial encyclopedic position. rhodesia was on uk shitlist for declaring unilateral independence, on western shitlist for white minority rule, so when soviets started funding guerilla factions which fir
phf: 􏿽st resulted in terrorist attacks, and later in full scale war, west's reaction was to put rhodesia under sanctions
phf: which is "the great betrayal" that ian smith refers to in his autobiography
phf: so then you have 15 years of bush war, under sanctions, rhodesians against zimbabwe african national liberation army, mugabe's zimbabwe african national union and zimbabwe people's revolutionary army
phf: i know it's a folly to wikipedia pilpul, but i decide to check on what it says
phf: there's a massive background section that doesn't mention sanctions once, but it says, without a quote "Backed by proxy by the United States and its Western allies, the Rhodesian Front (RF) took an uncompromising position against the communist ideology of the ZIPRA and ZANLA."
phf: which is a fabrication, but can be pilpuled "well, what does _backed_ really mean?" because further down there's clarification, "The United States took the official position that it would not recognise Rhodesia as an independent state, but some American soldiers who had seen combat in Vietnam joined the Rhodesian Front."
phf: which as far as i understand is the most accurate and complete assesment of u.s. support
phf: in fact jeff "invented modern firearm istruction" coopper was one such volunteer http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096120
bitbot[asciilifeform]: (asciilifeform) 2022-04-16 phf: i'm reading jeff cooper's the art of rifle. man was a legend, "the art of..." is a foundational book on rifle handling, but, like, landau, will be lost on somebody who's not on this track (of course one can read landau and cooper, and practice what they write, but...)
phf: but anyway, back to wikipedia. finally once the perspective one is supposed to hold is established in the background section, in "belligerents" section we learn that "Despite the effect of economic and diplomatic sanctions, Rhodesia developed and maintained a powerful and professional military."
phf: 􏿽there's a different wikipedia article, "1960's in rhodesia", which gives succinct timeline of things, (war started in '64) '65 "Britain imposed total economic sanctions against Rhodesia on 12 December.", '66 "The United Nations voted for selected mandatory sanctions, including oil,
phf: 􏿽 against Rhodesia on 16 December", '68 "The United Nations Security Council approved comprehensive mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia through Resolution 253 on 29 May."
asciilifeform: damn complicated pile of mystery; complete with 'dolchstoss' etc apparently
asciilifeform: also seems to support e.g. alex rosov's pov re subj -- 'they strangled rhodesia to show erryone that no, you aint allowed to build a functional, independent country from scratch, fuckyou'
phf: by the way, i thought that i mentioned it as a curio in logs, but apparently in private conversations with horse people, that oil ban is also how rhodesia had the last battle active cavalry
asciilifeform vaguely recalls that they were the last to use classic tachanka; but not knew
phf: oh yeah, there's a particularly spicy controversy around grey's scouts, american photo journalist ross baughman joined them to take photos, which won him a pulitzer
phf: “A guerrilla prisoner waits with a rope noose around his neck shortly before white cavalry troopers in the Grey's Scouts drag him behind their cantering horses near the town of Kikidoo in western Rhodesia, 23 September 1977.
phf: ”
phf: “While interrogating prisoners at gunpoint, a white soldier makes suspected guerrillas hold a stress position for over an hour in the midday heat of the Kalahari desert on Rhodesia's western border with Botswana, 21 September 1977.”
phf: but then you research it further, and there's "debate" around the photos, on account (and i'll just quote wp)
phf: “n order to accompany the Scouts, Baughman had to prove he could ride a horse and was required to carry a weapon and wear an Army uniform, thus making himself indistinguishable from the troops. In addition, he presented himself as sympathetic to the aims of the Rhodesian government and military.”
phf: “AP General Manager Keith Fuller expressed doubts about Baughman's methods of acquiring them. Enough speculation was raised that the photographs were withdrawn from consideration for the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award of the Overseas Press Club after the Club's Annual Awards Committee meeting in February 1978.”
phf: “When the same photos won the Pulitzer only weeks later several members of the Overseas Press Club jury apologized for their decision, stating that lack of information about the circumstances under which the photos were taken led them to their conclusion.”
phf: i can't comment on it any further, because i don't have necessary research done yet. the `photos are authentic` camp argues that baughman acted the role, so greys let him photograph their war atrocities. the `photos are fake` argue that baugman egged greys on into idiotic shenanigans.
phf: 􏿽wherever the subject is mentioned online, particularly with the "photos are fake" take, baugman appears and argues his point. his core argument seems to be that sgt bruce moore-king published a biography "white man black war" (self-published in south africa, was a bitch to get, and
phf: 􏿽 i haven't gotten to it yet), where he corraborates baugman's story
phf: the counter argument seems to be that at least two other published accounts, including by this guy https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8037600/Chris-Munnion.html
phf: christopher munnion of "the telegraph" called "banana sunday"
phf: and the autobiography of major mike williams, who was an american commander in one of the grey's scouts squadrons
phf: put some kind of shade on baugman, the nature of which i haven't discovered yet, because i haven't gotten to those books either
asciilifeform: lulzy photos, distinct 'white helmets'(tm) flavour
phf: i do know though that when moore-king published his "white man black war" in 1989 he was politically active in mugabe's zimbabwe, and it's not an autobiography (as the preface indicates), but rather short stories inspired by his experience.
phf: asciilifeform, well, i found the parallels between recent "white border guards whipping haitian immigrants" photos and baugman's noose photo to be particularly on point :>
asciilifeform thought 'long ameri-tradition, recall 'short shrift for german spy' staged photo in ww1' , tried to pull it outta google 'images' -- lol, vanished, 'unhappened'
asciilifeform: no moar than 2-3 yrs ago, was findable
phf: jury should disregard the following statement, but i also found it interesting that baugman's first big project was an investigative series called "nazis in america", and that baugman spent last decade giving lectures "ethics in journalism". that last one is particularly a chef's kiss
asciilifeform when thinks about 'pulitzer-winning photos' thinks about exactly these always
asciilifeform: oughta be 'goebbels prize'
phf: …and am i the only one to notice that baugman kind of sounds like bugman (the judge bangs his gavel "any more of such comment from you and i will dismiss the case with prejudice!")
phf: asciilifeform, but yeah this grey's scouts photo controversy is representative of the whole thing re http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1020971
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 12:08:46 asciilifeform[5]: phf: know of a decent source re subj ?
asciilifeform: bugman, bagman...
asciilifeform: is almost as if they pick the ones with 'appropriate' names. bankmans.
phf: a handful of small digit published books, often self published, by participants, youtube video interviews by "i was there" folk. on the other side you have international consensus, which is pretty much crystalized.
phf: the facts themselves are reminiscent of france's question during the bombing of kosovo "wait, why are we supporting muslims over christians" with the answer "lol, which decade is this"
phf: bulk of participants are now old men or dead in the past decade
phf: and of course pest is now a whitesupremacist dark net chat system https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/magazine/rhodesia-zimbabwe-white-supremacists.html
asciilifeform: sumbody wake up weev!1111
dulapbot: (trilema) 2017-12-22 deedbot: weevlos voiced for 30 minutes.
asciilifeform: iirc the rhodesia thing may've been '1st swallow of spring' of 'wtf, disagree? do you heil hitler?' thing
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-07-28 00:27:53 phf[awt]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2022-07-27#1010560 << like i've mentioned before, i've been studying subj. on account of first known to me case of das racis!1 being used as weapon. but specifically why “build rhodesia” because of how fervently patriotic rhodesians were. were building
asciilifeform lulz over own naivete re 'where good sources?' q. is rather like asking about 'good sources' for e.g. spanish civil war
asciilifeform also lulz over the ancient thread, where e.g.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: (trilema) 2017-12-22 weevlos: most people can't be expected to
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 14:12:11 asciilifeform[jonsykkel]: lulz over own naivete re 'where good sources?' q. is rather like asking about 'good sources' for e.g. spanish civil war
asciilifeform: awt: did read that 1. there's a buncha these
asciilifeform: '1 d00d in trenches' type of source
dulapbot: (trilema) 2014-11-15 asciilifeform: 'I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, n
phf: 􏿽http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1021024 << curious that the source for this article is https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/people/john-ismay mixed with hounding individuals online ("hello, i'm from new york times, why are you a nazi?") you also have complete by the book talki
phf: 􏿽ng points about rhodesia. and i only just noticed that bugmen photos are in there also.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 14:04:21 phf[deedbot|awt]: (https://archive.is/UhBNU)
asciilifeform: they're prolly in all their pieces re subj, same ones
asciilifeform: (how many were there even.)
phf: but john ismay himself is a navy seal with iraq deployment, if nothing else it's not typical for these types to go hounding individual veterans for their political views
asciilifeform sees nuffin inconsistent there. (see also.)
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2021-08-26 asciilifeform: this is why asciilifeform unable historically to muster much sympathy for 'iraq veteran, his bonus retro-withdrawn, evicted' -- motherfuckers, you could have, should have, shot 1) your officers 2) your landlord 3) anything with a harvard diploma -- half century ago. but no, gotta faithful-dog instead.
phf: his recent article, https://archive.is/Hm26n `by Eric Schmitt, Adam Entous, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay and Thomas Gibbons-Neff`. apparently it takes five guys to write an nyt article with any kind of meat on it
asciilifeform: these 'faithful dogs' even moar pathetic specimens than ordinary nyt et al goebbelses who went to yale instead of iraq. the latter at least judas for solid 30 silvers, rather than eat bullets for regime which pays 25k/y and 'die in queue at va hospital'
asciilifeform: there's over9000 of these neh
phf: awt, there's van orden, recently a house rep https://www.vanordenforcongress.com
asciilifeform: afaik this is how one proves regime loyalty and 'become electable' in 'red usa' (vs 'blue usa' via harvard diploma etc) but in practice ==
dulapbot: (trilema) 2015-09-03 ascii_field: they happily send their sons to army so they can 'die for a fat bitch's right to marry her dog'
awt[asciilifeform]: phf: yes. "My friends died for the vendetta of a bunch of Eastern European jews against Russia this means I know what I'm talking about"
asciilifeform: 'dulce et decorum est pro soros mori' !1111
phf: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1021047 << that list by the way is another rabbit hole, of alpha bugmen and alpha bugmen in making
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 14:28:51 phf[awt|deedbot]: his recent article, https://archive.is/Hm26n `by Eric Schmitt, Adam Entous, Ronen Bergman, John Ismay and Thomas Gibbons-Neff`. apparently it takes five guys to write an nyt article with any kind of meat on it
phf: but then the youngest in the group, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, is the like a zoomer top bugman in the making. he looks like tom cruise, has a hyphenated last name, served multiple deployments, and writes pieces like
phf: "I could justify fighting in Afghanistan — until the Boston bombing"
phf: where we learn that his ancestral home is "couple of blocks" away from the boston bombing site, so probably somewhere in back bay
phf: he's also an english major at georgetown university
awt[asciilifeform]: baizuo/bugman
phf: i don't know that these are even baizuo, because that's some bottom of the barrel plankton people, twitter activists. at least in my mind
phf: this thomas gibbons-neff is clearly a capable, well meaning individual. i take it the past year he's been on the ground putting out "horrors of war" articles with this girl natalia yermak, https://archive.is/DGZuG. that's them in the photo, with "press" vests
phf: one could ask if there's a conflict of interest, or raise the question journalistic integrity, when new york times war correspondent teams up with a former video production freelancer in the country that he's covering
phf[asciilifeform]: "In a Ukraine Workshop, the Quest to Build the Perfect Grenade" "A Shopping Trip for Apples, Over the Last Bridge in Lysychansk" "Under Missile Strikes, Ukrainians Haul Water" "In battered Ukrainian city, the latest battle is against winter"
phf: so an american male journalist teams up with a ukranian girl directly affected by war, to write a regular stream of humanitarian pieces from the perspective of the occupied, complete with "rumors that are impossible to verify" and such
phf: "A shopping trip for apples, over the last bridge in Lysychansk." https://archive.is/NqQ3C
phf: the main feature of clown world, is that it's not funny, it's depressing as fuck
awt[asciilifeform]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1021065 << in my mind the meaning is more literal - refering to the self-hating nature of anyone who is white + left-leaning.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 15:21:34 phf[awt]: i don't know that these are even baizuo, because that's some bottom of the barrel plankton people, twitter activists. at least in my mind
phf[asciilifeform]: right no, i get it, i just don't think that this is the case of baizou, it's something else entirely
phf: 􏿽in some hypothetical past gibbons-neff's clearly well meaning activism would've been tempered by grownups. i think ascii would argue that it would've been a kabuki even back then, but i don't think so. i think cases like baugmen pulitzer photos were ambigous special circumstances i
phf: 􏿽njections, and the whole system rested on some amount of overal impartial legitimacy
phf: now gibbons-neff's work is fully integrated into the vertical. there's nobody in that gaggle of older bugmen to tell him, that he's putting out fully compromised fluff pieces, that mix horrible reality of his direct experience with opinons, implications and sprinkling of propaganda
phf: because those pieces are used as a way to keep a certain sentiment up, that then can be shaped by more skilled and intentional operators towards specific objectives
phf: e.g. a never ending stream of "grandma" horror stories paradoxically used to support "to the last ukranian" political pieces
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1021071 << suspect that it's belly-bustingly funny to the perps (i.e. lizards). just as bear baiting not funny to the bears, aint trying to be, but to ~spectators~
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 15:38:13 phf[deedbot|awt]: the main feature of clown world, is that it's not funny, it's depressing as fuck
asciilifeform: they luvv 'gladiatorial combat between untermenschen', as a spectacle per se
asciilifeform: ( or the 'domestic' variant, where e.g. that 'gas stoves ban' thing or over9000 similar previously, where the lizards appear in the role of the boy with magnifying glass over ants )
signpost[asciilifeform]: was hilarious recently, how quickly a friend of wife sent her "did you know how bad gas stoves are for you!!11!" articles.
asciilifeform: signpost: i vaguely recall an early 2000s 'let's ban fireplaces', similarly
signpost[asciilifeform]: to which "this bitch needs to stop reading the atlantic"
signpost[asciilifeform]: the dulap story really was the final form of these.
signpost[asciilifeform]: "your husband isn't castrated?! do you know how dangerous that is for democracy?"
asciilifeform: eh the dulap story was about a kronprinz who was dodging the ball chopper draft, rather than plebe
asciilifeform: ( bonus: the original seed of lulphakts behind 'ohnoez, gas stoves' -- turns out, in usa chimney in kitchen is considered rare luxury; and, turns out, decerebrated lumpens often enuff use gas stove as ersatz space heater )
signpost[asciilifeform]: went to refresh my memory and lol, drowned in references to it or the box without link
asciilifeform: signpost: orig piece re subj
asciilifeform: ( tho, he changed the ending from the original ro anon piece, but asciilifeform not remembers precisely how )
awt[asciilifeform]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-19#1021075 << I can't refute that he may be well intentioned. I admit "english major at Georgetown" is a world utterly foreign to anything I know.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-19 15:51:29 phf[awt|deedbot]: 􏿽in some hypothetical past gibbons-neff's clearly well meaning activism would've been tempered by grownups. i think ascii would argue that it would've been a kabuki even back then, but i don't think so. i think cases like baugmen pulitzer photos were ambigous special circu
awt[asciilifeform]: I can imagine that perhaps a trust fund could somehow enable this sort of "worldview" in which this path makes any kind of sense.
asciilifeform: eh, the bagmans, neffs, etc. aint any kinda nutters, they're entirely rational , simply so happens that they work as goebbelses for the reich
asciilifeform: the 'xyz at georgetown' is for same purpose as 'n yrs in iraq' , and exactly same as 'leader in komsomol' -- loyalty test
asciilifeform: what they do aint any kinda new thing either -- merely return to w. r. hearst methods
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