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“Getting rid of teachers because we all have chatbots is like getting rid of doctors because we all have the plague.”

@leninology.bsky.social in @parapraxismag.bsky.social starting off with my book and the question: what does the liberal want? www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/all...

A versatile line. Applies to, yes, tyrants, maybe a president, all billionaires, the petty landlord. Maybe even what Foucault called “fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior”

In Prometheus Bound, the playwright Aeschylus puts a line in the mouth of Prometheus: “To look on all friends with suspicion—this disease would seem to be inherent in a tyrant’s soul”

Goffman’s “On Cooling the Mark Out” is good on this. Like con artists, if Republicans take money/rights/lives, Democrats pacify the mark after loss. To pacify them, you need to resonate with the mark and treat the con as legitimate or accidental, not intentional fraud. gwern.net/doc/crime/19...

A lot is downstream of Moody movement and affiliates, where there was a big emphasis on reconciliation (of North/South, not white/Black) for which premillennialism was mobilizing. But 1910/20s, anti-Pentecostalism and anti-evolution was obviously about blackness, setting up antichrist talk now

I’m writing on dispensationalism/End Times. A consistent theme once the Rapture jumps to the N. America (during/after Civil War) is how much it’s about race. One prominent teacher said God wouldn’t rapture Africans. Race is the main theme until The Fundamentals in 1910s, when they add anti-communism

I’m in Michigan. I don’t know if I’m seeing these ads, but I’m seeing the AIPAC shell groups ads about him all day every day on instagram. And I don’t watch cable TV but whenever I’m at the gym I see the ads against him the whole time

Another case of strangely appreciating how explicit this regime makes the normal function of US might. Most casualties in modern conflicts, an overwhelming majority, are always civilians. If you work in the military, like a full half of your job’s effect is killing children

You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist the urge to blow up a power plant, a bridge, a bunch of schoolchildren

Exhibit on how the racism is the sexuality and vice versa. Like a grand unified psychoanalytic-racecraft-pedocon theory

Sadly I don’t qualify because while my last book did get uploaded to the pirating site Anthropic pulled from (and whoever did that, thanks, it’s an honor!) it wasn’t in the timeframe for the case

The Works List for the Anthropic case includes the Communist Manifesto, entitling our boys to $3,000 (you know Marx could always use the extra cash)

A point Matt makes is, ok, if the reply to M4A is it’s never going to happen, but a moderate Dem proposes an inferior plan that they also don’t think will happen, then the policymaker with the inferior plan should at least have to explain why their inferior plan that kills more people is preferable

Following “what the people want” and tweaking poll questions is always in part a fool’s errand though. Most people don’t have carefully researched political convictions, they don’t know what they “want”

Matt Bruenig ran circles around Ezra Klein on this a few years ago. Really depends on how you phrase the question. “Do you want your employer to be able to decide your health insurance?” doesn’t do so well! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Weird to have a search engine giving me stuff I’m wanting instead of slop and ads

I switched my phone browser to DuckDuckGo and easily switched off AI, and I feel like I have a working search engine again. It’s like getting a useful Google back

I was so lucky to get a position with a fantastic college and make the transition. Even so, I seriously considered whether I might need to stay at the bad college just for the better insurance. It’s a trap

Been there. Last year when fighting cancer with good health insurance but a comically toxic employer, I had the thought “I might just be trapped here.” Balanced with “but also my college president, who told me I’m not hard to replace, could end my contract and let me die anytime!”