Down in the Dojo

Makin' stuff on the internet: TrueStoryDesu!, Down in the Dojo, Film Dojo, and Anime Deathmatch.

[Down in the Dojo @DownintheDojo]

Although I already keep a movie diary on @letterboxd I like @renegadecut 's tweet thread diary, too. It's a good idea that will force me to reflect a bit more on the movies I watch. So here's the pinned tweet from this cinema twit.

[4quest.❤️🔱🖤 @thinkpiecetribe]

The New York Post treats Zohran Mamdani like how J. Jonah Jameson treats Spider-Man lmao

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

Imagine hating your daughter so much you help make a guy you literally think is a pedophile the president

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

Paul Rudd and Adam Scott recreated the BOSOM BUDDIES sitcom intro just for fun and the attention to detail is insane 😂

[Atom Araullo @atomaraullo]

@PalantirTech You forgot the ‘“Hail Hydra” at the end.

[Classical Liberal Caucus @LP_CLC]

@PalantirTech We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from slavery and only fight the next war if it would free slaves, regardless of how favorably government slavery enthusiasts like you think about conscription.

[Down in the Dojo @DownintheDojo]

Oh yeah, definitely one the most extensive technofascist screeds of all time here.

But Thiel has been against liberty and for disingenuous doubletalk publicly ever since he backed the fraudster Terry Gene Bollea.

[Palantir @PalantirTech]

Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska

https://t.co/8igjazz1On

[EFF @EFF]

When DOGE employees break the law, their names should not be secret.

In the Privacy Act lawsuit against DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management, EFF helped unseal the names of employees at the center of the violations. Read yesterday's Court opinion. https://t.co/xtBbpGrWJO

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

This is the proud language of a white supremacist. There’s no other way to describe it and no defense of it.

Pure racism.

[Idrees Ali @idreesali114]

The latest Economist cover says it all.

[The Daily Britain @dailybritainonx]

🚨 BREAKING: Thomas Massie says the DOJ deleted key Epstein files before it could expose Israel and Mossad.

Let’s make this go viral.

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

***Leaked White House Video***

Trump admits he told Linda McMahon not to worry about getting congressional approval to shut down the Department of Education.

[Laura Rozen @lrozen]

I did not think this was real, but he really said it.

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

Israel tried to kill an 81 year old civilian, and former Reformist politician, for trying to arrange a deal via the Pakistanis.

Instead they killed his wife, & maimed him.

This is all fine, apparently. Presumably Labour & Conservative Friends of Israel have no issues with it.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Trump just cut a midterm ad for every Democrat in America.

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

Download the new White House and you download government spyware

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is absolutely infuriating and completely idiotic.

An estimated 95,000 scientists and researchers have left federal agencies since Trump returned to the White House. These are the people tracking hurricanes, studying pediatric cancer, and modeling the climate tipping points that determine whether we can still prevent catastrophe.

We lost them because this administration defunded their work, shuttered their offices, and made clear that finding out the truth is no longer a government priority.

NASA’s own administrator just said studying climate change isn’t part of NASA’s mission. The agency that first warned Congress about global warming in 1988 now treats that work as a distraction.

Meanwhile, China and Europe are recruiting our scientists, funding their labs, and making long-term bets on the industries of the future while we gut the research infrastructure that took generations to build.

We are surrendering global scientific leadership voluntarily, deliberately, and one resignation letter at a time.

https://t.co/zYjiKOeSkX

[Los Angeles Times @latimes]

Dozens arrested after authorities fire tear gas at 'No Kings' protesters https://t.co/DM1aT33o9X

[Martina Navratilova @Martina]

This is criminal in any country. How the fuck is this on????

[Trey Yingst @TreyYingst]

After killing Ali Shuaib, the IDF accused him of being part of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces, releasing a photo of the Al Manar reporter in military garb.

“Unfortunately there isn’t really a picture of it, it was photoshopped,” the IDF told Fox News about the source of the photo.

[Congressman Shri Thanedar @RepShriThanedar]

An ICE agent just pled guilty to raping a detained woman for months.

This is who Congressional Republicans want to give $85 million more of your money to, and they're refusing to let TSA agents get paid until they do.