Juice
@Juice@midwest.social
- Comment on Please bro 3 days ago:
artifice (noun) - clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others.
artifice intelligence
- Comment on got banned on reddit for 3 days..... so hi... 1 week ago:
If podcast started, insane, return to step 1
But don’t kys the best people out here are crazy AF. You gotta be imbalanced to keep imagination, hope, feistiness, the will to do something drastically different then the awful path laid out before us.
Mess around with gender instead. Be hot, and gay. Its these normies that I really worry about
- Comment on *sniff* *mumbles* 2 weeks ago:
If you’re on the right you think he’s a Marxist commie, and don’t like commies.
If you’re a commie you don’t think he’s a commie, you think he’s full of shit and uses left wing intellectual language to hide that he’s an apologist for liberal social democracy.
If you’re an anarchist probably think he’s an avatar for a certain kind of former Soviet bloc intellectualist elitism, and he actively discourages direct action (I’ve never spoken to an anarchist about him, I might have to ask one.)
Gender critics and feminists don’t like him because he’s more than a little chauvinistic, and a vocal critic of Judith Butler.
If you’re apolitical you think he’s annoying and incomprehensible.
I think he appeals to a certain sort of budding or wannabe left intellectual. Someone who doesn’t completely understand his work as a decades-long project, probably because they are still discovering it, and the political consequences of that project. Like he says things that are interesting and sort of novel because he’s a Hegelian and Hegelian analysis can be full of all kinds of cool insights. When you assemble his arguments together as a body of work though it has a much different character than some of his more interesting points taken in isolation, which takes on a different character when put together so that one can see the arc of his work. But as a moderate Hegelian he neither fits with the right Fukuyamist Hegelians or the left Marxist Hegelians, and he is critical of both groups.
I think he understands intellectualism as a social force, and likes to bother different stripes of intellectuals. He’s controversial enough to stay relevant, and good at working the media. I think he is very intentional with all this stuff.
But he broke Jordan Peterson when they debated, and got him out of the spotlight for like a year or two and that was pretty funny
- Comment on Why is kindness often viewed as a sign of naïveté? 2 weeks ago:
Its such a trope in movies and TV shows though. I call it the Khan trope. The narrative makes a huge deal about how unfathomably intelligent a villain is, and then when the villain is finally revealed they’re like comically evil with the most superficial and pathetic philosophy. I think its just hard for dumb TV writers (no offense) to write intelligent villains.
To me a much better villain is someone who cares a great deal about something real, and is actually very intelligent and determined, but is just deeply confused about something. People like Tulsi Gabbard or Amy Coney Barret are good examples, they were raised in these weird cults and now they have no understanding of anything outside their narrow view, and have been conditioned to reject anything that contradicts their social beliefs. A lot of people think they are doing good, the people whom they love tell them all the time how proud they are, etc. But because of their intelligence and determination they just are all twisted up in knots inside a house of mirrors that they were forced into before they had the chance to question any of it.
And yeah these people may not be super intelligent, just opportunistic and smart/determined enough and groomed to take power. But it resembles actual intelligence more than “only the strong deserve to survive heh heh heh twirls moustache villainously” that we usually get from this slop.
- Comment on Why is kindness often viewed as a sign of naïveté? 2 weeks ago:
Abusers try to stigmatize sympathy and empathy, because as long as it is a stigma then people won’t talk to each other about their own abuse, then the abuser gets away with it. But no matter how strong and powerful an abuser is, even a fairly small number of dedicated, close-knit victims and their supporters can make the abusers lives extremely difficult, if not tip over their power completely.
- Comment on Funny 2 weeks ago:
Mormons are so funny, I legit feel bad for all the people who have been traumatized by these weirdos, but like these children are called “elders.”
They have all these weird rules where premarital sex is totally not permissible, but they be fucking, and then be like “its not sex with a condom on” or of course soaking. Like straight faced “I’m saving myself for marriage,” and I’m like “we’ve had sex 6 times this week, Genevieve.”
I was at a party in college and this Mormon dude who always did these awkward, overly complicated jive handshakes that felt really violating, was sitting outside upset and depressed holding a half-empty beer. He was like “its all over I’ve sacrificed everything I believe in, for what? So I can drink a beer at a party??” It was one beer he wasn’t even finished with it. Its like relax dude, I’m like 19 and spiraling into alcoholism I think you’ll be okay this one time.
Ive heard so many horror stories, but I’ve only had good and very funny experiences with Mormons. And none of this even gets into the magic underwear or like you get your own planet in the afterlife.
Idk how people believe in this stuff sober
- Comment on Funny 2 weeks ago:
I’ve never had a gay guy wake me up too damned early on a Saturday to talk about sucking dick.
Skill issue
- Comment on The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made 2 weeks ago:
“Disco Elysium is perfect but also a complete shit show” is becoming its own genre of journalism.
- Comment on Anon looks into cults 3 weeks ago:
Own a fuck load of property, don’t pay taxes, keep attracting new people to pay into the group, convince existing members to pay more
- Comment on Bird 3 weeks ago:
Land creatures = fish + time
- Comment on Bird 3 weeks ago:
Bum, bum, bum
- Comment on I'm doing my part 4 weeks ago:
Right, but at this point pedophilia does exist as an actual phenomenon, which the right uses to build a culture of fear and suspicion in which they can frame all their arguments credibly.
Like people are actually worried about child abuse, for many good and bad reasons. So without addressing the fear and the underlying desire for just governance then no amount of political humanism will get through. People are, irrationally, more afraid of pedophiles than they are willing to criticize the cultural implications of the meanings of words.
That’s not your fault, you aren’t creating or reproducing this phenomenon and I largely agree with you. I just think its time to start coming up with better criticisms than trying to poke logical holes. The right is fighting a war and we are having an intellectual debate. I’m a firm advocate for scientific intellectualism, while exploring even philosophical implications of your plans and actions. I think this is logically strong, but practically weak argument.
- Comment on the universe about to have a little minty b 1 month ago:
We love neo-geocentrism
- Comment on Anon is smarter than a genius 5 months ago:
The sales people almost always end up doing well in companies. And then when they get high up in the company they only value others ability to make sales and work for bonuses. As time goes on a company’s e-suite gets more and more saturated with charismatic dummies who will do anything for a buck, leaving less room for good administrators and engineers.
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 5 months ago:
Hah! Good luck finding one
- Comment on Anon is smarter than a genius 5 months ago:
Being rich makes you so divorced from consequences that you start to believe that what is in your brain is what is real. Money isn’t what we think it is.
- Comment on fuck this asshole 5 months ago:
There’s some of it in the comments of this post
- Comment on fuck this asshole 5 months ago:
Make sure to keep blaming “rednecks” and “hillbillies”, and not the billionaire backers of MAGA who own various media outlets and some of the largest companies in the world.
- Comment on Boiling hot, Ice cold, skin melting, frigid, liquid magma, hailstorm, just right for 5 seconds, dragon fire 5 months ago:
4cm
Perfectly average
- Comment on That explains a lot 5 months ago:
Sounds kinda tain
- Comment on Sun God 5 months ago:
Neat! Thanks!
- Comment on Sun God 5 months ago:
I guess because of perspective, Mercury being millions of miles closer to the camera than it is to the sun, the actual proportions would have the planet being much smaller by comparison
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value 5 months ago:
“Machines were the weapons deployed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor”
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value 5 months ago:
I’ve said it before, all ceos could be replaced by mascots and it would have no negative effect on the productive capabilities of our society. On the contrary things might actually improve for once in my life
- Comment on Stop touching your stuff! 5 months ago:
You say that, but what about St. Paul who is definitely in heaven and was a pathological gooner
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 5 months ago:
Hah! Good one
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 5 months ago:
Same, except i wasnt a lit major, just a guy who was going through the phase of “this is what intelligent people look like” while trying to educate myself. I was convinced DFW was the voice of our generation, heralding in a new era of consciousness.
The book is conceptually pretty cool, like it is really well written and he draws together so many disparate elements to make kind of a coherent narrative.
But the idea of making a book impossible to read on purpose is a funny joke, especially one that so many aspiring intelligentsia gush over. I can appreciate a good shaggy dog as much as the next guy, but IJ is just so far beyond the pale.
A book should be challenging because the concepts are unique and well considered, and it draws from lots of historic and philosophical research; not because the author decided to intentionally break the flow of the narrative to make you flip to the not-optional appendix to read 32 pages of made up synopsis about a character’s avant-garde filmography.
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 5 months ago:
Quebec
Yeah if our reality could stop resembling Infinite Jest, that would be great. I can’t stand that stupid fucking book and how accurately it predicts our increasingly insane circumstances
- Comment on Sooo, where did the blatant Nazism suddenly come from? 5 months ago:
Fascism shouldn’t be thought of as a static “thing” or an object of ideology. Peoples beliefs come from their environment. We are so individualized as a society that often we as progressives take “personal responsibility” too far, we buy the premise implicitly without realizing there are flaws with thinking in this way. Every logical system has flaws and contradictions, its proven mathematically though I think some systems are more rigorous and based on evidence.
GWF Hegel’s philosophy of Right was written in 1820, and influenced political thought ever since. Liberalism was still in it’s revolutionary phase and theories about it were still fairly new, the Wealth of Nations was written just 50 years before, and Karl Marx was like two when it was released, although it would serve as the basis for much of his work analyzing the hidden relationships of Capital, and ethical political philosophy on the whole.
The book is the closest I think someone can honestly get to an actual “horseshoe theory” because not only did it influence the left but it also influenced the far right. Hegel, using the works of other great liberal philosophers such as Locke and Kant, who Hegel was always working to surpass, applied his dialectical philosophical methods to the writings of liberalism.
What he discovered was a natural tendency toward fascism. Like he prefigured fascism by 100 years. He wasn’t a fascist, there was no such thing. He was just exploring the ideas of this revolutionary philosophy, one that purported to liberate the mind, body and spirit, and discovered the oppressive seeds which might grow into something quite different.
This isn’t to call liberals fascists, I’m a communist and 20th century communism had a lot of problems, to put it mildly. I would say confidently that progressive liberals are not crypto fash, in fact the term “progressive” is a typically left-Hegelian ideal, in that it describes human progress and development as the subject of history. Instead it challenges the idea of the liberatory nature of private property, a key component of liberal thought. Of course this is all depending how you look at it, right-Hegelians see this same formulation as proof of the inevitability of their ideas and justification for their actions.
You’re getting a lot of different opinions about this stuff so I’m trying to make sort of a different point about philosophy, history and action. Other reading for a deep dive on fascism is the essay Ur Fascism by Umberto Eco (great empirical analysis, but the least scientific IMO), Trotsky’s pamphlet Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It, and HA Roy’s Fasism, Its Philosophy, Professions and Practice.
In a way, fascism has always been there below the surface, informally shifting the sands of history until it was formalized in the early 20th century. I don’t think you can have a society based on private property without some elements of fascism somewhere. Mostly “western democracies” will outsource their extreme cruelty to other countries where it doesn’t affect their citizens.
But in summary, Fascism is the realization of the contradictions inherent in liberal ideology, its liberalism turned inside-out, with all its appearances of justice and freedom cut away, leaving only the logic of expansion and domination that most liberal democracies do their best to hide. This is how fascists are able to hide in our society, their individual beliefs are not completely unpalatable to centrists and conservatives who have also started to dispense with justice and freedom in the interest of national greatness. Its what makes their beliefs so malleable, and its also why liberals have such a hard time defining it. But fascism isn’t an individual’s beliefs, if it was it would be just regular bog-standard chauvinism. Fascism is a mass movement which will use charismatic leaders amenable to their politics to rally the masses.
In our society, the middle classes are the “battery” for fascism. Middle classes are constantly under attack under capitalism and the individuals often feel this and become paranoid (doomsday prepping, etc.,) and this paranoia and real social pressure to produce or be wiped out, the fear from the constant threat of precarity and uncertainty fits hand in glove with the aims and means of fascists.
- Comment on Funny this never made it into a James Taylor song 6 months ago:
I see lots of references to John Denver, Country Roads, but I present:
“Bye, bye Miss Bologna Pie”