Notices tagged with talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 07:24:01 JST 
simsa03
Unbearable: People who declare themselves a victim of the circumstances they themselves created.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 13-Mar-2025 02:24:22 JST
simsa03
Need to dive more into what the "Network State" concepts mean and how they are related to what Shoshana Zunoff wrote in her "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019) or Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson in their "Maschine, Platform, Crowd" (2017). Where is Evgeny Morozov, this George Scialabba of tech utopianism, when one needs him?
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 13-Mar-2025 01:41:21 JST
simsa03
Didn't see the parallels between the concept of "mafia state" – in my connotation, not as a state apparatus infiltrated by mafia crime families (and still capable to fight back) but as a mafia organisation posing as a national state and using its resources and sovereign rights (like Russia) – and the concept of a "network state" with its lead time of 50+ years of experimentation in the financial offshore world of venture capitalism.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Mar-2025 22:08:53 JST
simsa03
For each society the slide into authoritarianism is a pretty easy thing. Far more difficult is it for such a society to free itself again from authoritarian rule. Anecdotal evidence places the bar for such liberation pretty high. The society needs to be militarily conquered and defeated, then a program of "re-education" needs to be set in place by the victorious party. Self-liberation from authoritarianism usually isn't effective; the history of the fall of the USSR and the rise of the authoritarian and revisionist Russia is the prime example. But if that anecdotal evidence gives a reliable rule of thumb, then it is highly unlikely that the U.S. after the Trump regime can easily return to liberal values.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy put it bluntly recetnly:
« I guess we should have known that everyone who signs up to work for Donald Trump is signing up for one single project and that is the transition of American democracy to a kind of kleptocratic oligarchy in which the billionaires rule, in which they get to steal from regular Americans. And if that's the domestic project, then the way that you normalize that kind of government is to associate yourself with similar governments abroad, like the Kremlin. So it's all part of one big domestic project, the foreign policy, the affection for dictatorships abroad is, in effect, a means towards transitioning our democracy to something very, very different, something we've never, ever seen before in this country. »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTyCUqoVpfw
(Perhaps he should have added that such a procedure serves the purpose to make clear who has power and who has not, who is in charge and who has to obey.)
Thus, it is not just helpful for US-ians to think of the current U.S. foreign policy as in service of the domestic agenda. It also helps to explain to non-US-ians the seeming irrationality, the lack of principle, and the volatile nature of the current US foreign policy. There is neither a master plan nor a genuine interest in foreign events or states of affairs, because, like with Putin, the foreign policy is an opportunities-based approach that deals with world affairs solely in respect of how they are of use for the domestic policy.
#Authoritarianism (as is #fascism) is the figurehead and shining image of the mobster. It is what makes him think he is doing something worthwhile. And once the mobster class has hijacked and taken with it the whole society, there is no way back. Given that the U.S. will not be defeated militarily, it has no way to return or leave behind the authoritarian character it once acquired. There will be no re-education this time.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 13:07:14 JST
simsa03
As the dust settles after the White House incident:
It seems to me that the attempt by Vance and Trump to pressure Zelenskyy into submission and accept a truce or peace deal that grants all of Putin's demands not only "backfired". There is a sense that regardless how or if the relationships may be salvaged, Europeans have begun to acknowledge that the times of the transatlantic NATO alliance are effectively over. Sure, Trump may stick to Article 5 for a while. Or he may not. But to the Europeans it makes no sense to trust him or the U.S. any further. Because what sense does a military alliance make when you can only rely on it when a president of the Democratic party is in the White House? So Trump already killed that, to the great pleasure of Putin.
But that also means that there is no guarantee that in case of an attack on a NATO state in Europe Trump will think that Article 5 applies. And with such a withdrawal of the nuclear deterrence provided hitherto by the U.S., it's far more reasonable for Putin to start an attack on the Baltic states, on Moldova, or even Poland already this summer rather than wait three or five years until the European states have refilled their depleted arsenals.
Anyway, even though I think the chances for such a major war over Europe this summer is about 80% to 90%, we may get lucky. Or other things may happen instead, like Trump pressuring SWIFT in Belgium to reinstate Russia's access to this global financial exchange system. Or that he revokes all secondary sanctions and China starts providing Russia with military equipment (although that would take a while longer because the few railroad lines avaliable are already clogged by North Korean trash so that China would need a year or so to build a few more lines). In both cases, Russia could outlive the sanctions, the military shortages, and the war in Ukraine is then won by Russia.
Again, even if that happens, something else is already in the making: the forging of a new European identity. One that arises from opposition to Russia (which is already excluded from Europe) and by shaking-off this ingrained sense of existing solely by the mercy of the U.S. (as warrantor of security).
It is a European identity that stems from the surge in importance of the Eastern European countries, from Poland, the Baltic states, the South-Eastern European countries. An identity that insists on values like liberal democracy, rule of law, separation of powers, etc. Weaker in its mutual association than a federal state or even a confederacy, but still a union of nations sharing the same outlook. And that is new: It is a European identiy not fed by the past (of WW 2 and how to avoid another such catastrophe) but by a common interest of what to look for in the future.
Parallel to (or shortly after) the inception of this new European identity, a second major project may regain steam: the resurgence of the Union of the Mediterranean. Not as a cultural or infrastructure project – that's how German chancellor Angela Merkel watered it down – but as it was originally conceived by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak: as a political union of all littoral states of the Mediterranean Sea, a kind of "southern EU", strongly aligned with the northern one economically and politically. It would, e.g., include such antagonistic countries like Israel and Türkiye, effectively binding all countries and nations of a region that share a common history of 3.000 years.
Thus, should we in Europe survive 2025 and should the war in Ukraine at least not end to the benefit of Russia, then these are the two exciting developments that we may find already in the making.
That outlook gives me immense hope and helps me survive this current doom and gloom.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 02-Mar-2025 00:46:59 JST 
tinydoctor
I am, of course, #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 11:43:04 JST
tinydoctor
Jathan Sadowski in Planetary Potemkin AI says AI is more an ideology than a technology. I think it's more a theology than an ideology--The theology of the would-be God Kings of Silicon Valley, the fairy dust instrumentality of their digital hydraulic empires.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 27-Feb-2025 06:43:39 JST
simsa03
Regardless who will succeed Trump in the White House, he already achieved his and Putin's goal of dissolving NATO. Because nobody can rely on the alliance only when there is a Democratic president who happens to comply with NATO obligations. The trust is gone. (And that means Russia's attack on Europe is imminent.)
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 11:05:30 JST
tinydoctor
People have asked me, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 08:30:21 JST
simsa03
First Trump said that the Gaza-ISIS needs to release *all* hostages until Saturday noon or else "hell will brake lose". Then the Gaza-ISIS agreed to free the three hostages already scheduled for release in the "ceasefire agreements" and walked away from its threat to no longer abide by it.
(By the way, there are journalists who think that the images of the emaciated freed hostages which Israel compared to those of the survivors of the concentration camps made the Gaza-ISIS think twice about the PR impact. Nonsense. The similiartity to the camp survivors is deliberate and intentional, to show Israel and the Jews what the Gaza-ISIS has in mind for them. It rather was the stark contrast to the jubilant well-fed Palestinian criminals freed in exchange that made the Gaza-ISIS think twice because it makes Israel look too good and too humane. Which is what the terrorists cannot accept.)
First Trump announced that the U.S. will remould Gaza into a "Riviera" of the Middle East (after expelling the Gazans to various Middle East nations). Jordan then said to take in 2.000 Gazan children and Egypt announced it is working on a plan to reconstruct Gaza without expulsion of its inhabitants.
First Trump told Zelensky he wants Ukraine's rare earth deposits in exchange for military aid past and future and told the European NATO members to raise their defense budgets to 5% GDP. Then he came up with the direct communication with Putin, suggesting a) to meet him in person in Saudi Arabia, b) that Ukraine cannot join NATO and that c) it will have to face serious territorial losses in exchange for peace. Everybody cries: This is the end of NATO and a backstabbing of Ukraine. Well, yes.
Trump always makes bombastic claims, demands, and announcements in order to unrattle the other parties of a bargaining negotiation.
If he wanted to throw Ukraine into the bin, he wouldn't have asked for the rare earth resources (which in part lie in the Donbass trerritories).
What he did was forcing the European NATO states to prepare for a military conflict with Russia while taking the U.S. off the theatre.
What he gave – not offered, but gave – to Putin was what Vlad Vexler – in his otherwise misguided analysis in his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrWgHuCOMZ8 – aptly called "procedural concessions". But Vexler underestimates the importance and the impact of these "procedural concessions". In particular the telephone call initated by Trump, the suggestion to meet in person in Saudia Arabia but also in Moscow and Washington, they all provided Putin with "face". Not "face saving", but the "face" that is the publicly staged acknowledgement of space, strength, gravitas, respect, and "honour" so common between Mafia bosses. Trump came to Putin, and he acknowledged his "face", thereby reinstating it in the public global sphere. A weakling (!) like Putin is drooling for such pats.
But what Trump also did was to prepare the stage for a grandiose walkback, a slamming of doors, and the full support of Europe and Ukraine against Putin and Russia, should Putin not concede. All while getting the U.S. out of Europe (with or without leaving NATO) and forcing Europeans to buy his military equipment and Ukraine to hand over its material resources.
Obviously, everything can fall apart. But look and observe how Trump works and how he's playing his cards. The war against Russia isn't over yet, Ukraine is not defeated yet, and Europe may still come to its senses that it needs to support Ukraine even more and prepare for a war with Russia in a few years.
But until anybody can explain what Trump may get in return for handing over all the positions that Putin essentially asked for in December 2021 – including a withdrawal of U.S. forces behind the lines of the early 1990s prior to NATO enlargement – these manoeuvres look more like being aimed at the Europeans than substantial concessions to Russia. Again: Why should Trump (of all transactionists) offer Putin all these diamonds for free? What's in it for him? Until anybody can explain *that*, we have no useful explanation of what the Trump administration is now staging with regard to Ukraine. Things are way too much in flux to already call this the end of NATO, the demise of Ukraine, or Russia's victory.
#Ukraine #Russia #Trump #Putin
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Feb-2025 06:20:46 JST
tinydoctor
Some cats are wingless owls. Some, not all.
#superbowl #superb_owl everyday is #caturday #owls #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 21:56:39 JST
tinydoctor
A traffic light turns red, I brake, stop, think: The monsters are everywhere; that Polyphemus with his red eye, the giants of metal and frost shouldering the arcs of power lines against the dawn. You don't have to believe in, or even notice them. They move in the world with you. *Don't* believe in them; if you have to believe it, it isn't true. The light turns green. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 01:55:54 JST
tinydoctor
Political dialects babelize. The confusion of tongues can conceal shared interests and objectives between leftwing and rightwing, and conflicting interests and objectives between right and right, left and left. Elites, left and right, exploit this confusion. Keep their constituencies captive with cant. Maybe we need the equivalent of #Polari for the internal proletariat, a right/left pidgin for the underclass, so the rest of us can talk under the elites. Hmm? #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Jan-2025 05:08:40 JST
simsa03
Over on X I was trying out their #AI called Grok, and asked it a factual question. It returned a text it wrote while aggregating various sources, e.g., #Wikipedia. years ago I had conversations with people from #Wikimedia that due to machine learning, AI, and automated text-generation, Wikipedia's concept of articles consisting of lemma and corpus, is an outdated form of organizing "knowledge". In the future, I mused, people will ask a question and corresponding (!) to the level of differentiation, machines will provide a written text as answer, based on crawling the net for information. "Knowledge" will thus not be structured as lemma plus corpus but as transitory, individualized question plus answer. I suggested to those Wikimedians that they need to hurry to come up with a proper technical form for such "new" #lexicography, because right now -- that is: back then -- Wikipedia, by mimicking knowledge-presentation of material books and paper-based compendiums, is the last of its kind. As far as I know, Wikimedia never took up on this change, and now the Musks, Zuckerbergs, Gates, the surveillance capitalists have taken over not with a service but a new way of lexicography that Wikimedia and the various Wikipedia editons have missed out on. It will be interesting to see whether and how Wikimedia and Wikipedia can catch up.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 14:51:39 JST
simsa03
This world has an underworld (be it spread out in space or in soul). Which means that to this underworld our world is its heaven.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 14:30:24 JST
simsa03
Blinding oneself with any form of empiricism and materialism doesn't alter the fact that life and planet are spiritual affairs.
Exception: The form of empiricism and materialism chosen because one reveres the spiritual component of things being just that: material and empirical items.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 14:22:29 JST
simsa03
Relationships one has at young(er) age circle around one's hope for oneself, whereas relationships one enters at a latter age circle around one's hope for the other.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 12:20:00 JST
tinydoctor
Patrianihilism. It’s a thing. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 14:40:51 JST
tinydoctor
Is ideology a form of stupidity?
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 12-Dec-2024 12:25:46 JST
tinydoctor
Sometimes I say, "I am a monk. I will not speak words. I will let silence master me. I will not consort with a lesser meaning than meaninglessness. But I always betray my vow.
I love the enemy.
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