Haltse

Tester of software, hot sauce , ideas and patience. __Retooling__ with 200% more mordant wit.

[Darren O'Neill - Outside Chiraq ⚡ @darrenoneill]

#ITM - The soon-to-be GrandPodfather is on baby watch! Tune in LIVE to take part in all of the fun.

It's media deconstruction, which provides enlightenment & entertainment.

No corporate cash, just your support, which leaves the boys free to speak their minds.

🚨TUNE IN NOW!🚨

[Doug Stanhope @DougStanhope]

And that's the short version. Much more appreciated if you've ever spent more than 3 hours in the UK.

[Haltse @haltse]

Would have hoped competition would have made ticketing better, but AXS seem to be as useless as Livenation, so even if the former gets broken up we still have people that impose technical controls making ordering impossible, 1st time user,they don't like my browser, has none of the controls they suggest were in use. Great first impression.

[Haltse @haltse]

Drivewise, opened a complaint with Allstate over a year ago as their Geodata provider shows my road with a speed limit under that which is posted, i "speed" according to them every trip. They have closed my ticket without resolution and want me to refile it. Basically told if I don't use it they charge me more, if I do use it they charge me more for speeding, and they wouldn't recalculate rate until the ticket was closed.

[Aron Fromm @aronfromm]

A little short I made about Norm.

[Haltse @haltse]

@DeathWishCoffee This is an odd take given that early rising leads to more time in the day to drink coffee

[Haltse @haltse]

I just realized that one of my favorite upright citizens, brigade sketches Has lost a little bit of relevance due to changes in our currency. Their astronaut material still remains on point though.

[Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee]

https://t.co/f8pT7OVN0O

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

The Cave You Didn't Build | Chester H. Sunde & Psy.D., Psychology Today

The beliefs you inherited were someone else's firelight—here's how to test them.

Key points

- The people who shaped your beliefs weren't villains. They were conjurers working with their own limited light.

- Plato's Cave depicts two light sources: firelight and sunlight.

- You can't always see sunlight directly, but you can test any belief system against Plato's 608e criterion.

---

Most of us encountered Plato's Cave in school. Prisoners chained underground, watching shadows on a wall, mistaking those shadows for reality. One prisoner breaks free, climbs into sunlight, and sees things as they actually are. The allegory is usually taught as a story about ignorance versus enlightenment: darkness below, light above, and the goal is to get out.

That reading isn't wrong. But it leaves out the most useful part.

Who Built the Cave?

Look more carefully at Plato's description in the Politeia (514a–521b) and you'll find something he names explicitly but that most summaries skip: the people operating the puppet-show. Behind the prisoners, out of sight, figures carry carved objects past a fire, projecting shadows onto the wall in front of the chained audience. Plato calls these figures thaumatopoioi: a compound of thauma (wonder, marvel) and poiein (to make). Marvel-makers. Conjurers.

This was not an obscure word in Plato's Athens. Thaumatopoioi were the illusionists and puppet-show operators who performed at religious festivals and public theaters: entertainers whose entire craft depended on the audience not seeing how the effect was produced. Plato's choice of this word is deliberate. He is not describing neutral carriers. He is describing people whose job is manufacturing a convincing reality for an audience that cannot see behind the curtain.

Here is what matters clinically: the conjurers are not necessarily villains. They may be devoted parents, conscientious teachers, or well-meaning community leaders. What makes them conjurers is not malice. It is that their light source (the fire they use to cast shadows) is constructed rather than ultimate. Partial rather than comprehensive. The fire does not require bad intentions to produce distorted shadows. It requires only that the source of illumination is artificial rather than grounded in something real.

Your parents raised you by the light of their own inherited beliefs—some examined, many not. Your teachers taught by the light of their training and theoretical commitments. Your culture projected its narratives onto the wall of your early experience. None of these light sources is identical. None of them is sunlight. And none of the people holding them were, in most cases, trying to deceive you. They were conjurers who believed in their own show.

Two Lights, Not Two Zones

The standard reading of the Cave treats it as a story about two zones: ignorance below, knowledge above. Get out of the cave and you're done. But Plato is describing something more precise: two light sources, each illuminating the same kinds of objects differently.

Inside the cave, firelight casts shadows of manufactured props. Outside the cave, sunlight illuminates real things. The difference is not that prisoners lack cognitive ability. Plato makes this clear: some prisoners become highly skilled at predicting which shadow will appear next, tracking patterns, building reliable models of the shadow-world. That is sophisticated reasoning. It is just reasoning about the wrong objects, under the wrong light.

Fire-wisdom is knowledge that is internally coherent but bounded by the artificial constraints of whoever built the cave you're in. You can be genuinely expert in fire-wisdom (precise, consistent, even brilliant) and still be organized around a light source that is not the Good.

Sun-wisdom is knowledge illuminated by something that was not staged for you. Plato is careful here. He refuses to define the Good directly, calling it "too big a topic" (506e), and models appropriate humility: he adds "God knows" whether his own account of it is right (517c). The sun, he says, is "seen only with an effort" (517c). We are, at best, glimpsing it. Never staring at it fully in this life.

The Test Plato Actually Gives Us

If we can't stare at the sun directly, how do we evaluate the firelight we've inherited? Plato gives us a practical criterion at 608e: "That which destroys and corrupts in every case is the bad; that which preserves and benefits is the good."

This is not a metaphysical definition. It is a clinical test. You may not be able to define the Good as an ultimate principle, but you can tell the difference between a plant thriving in sunlight and one withering in a closet. You can ask of any belief system, family rule, cultural narrative, or professional framework: Does this actually preserve and benefit the people it governs? Or does it (however unintentionally) destroy and corrupt?

I use this test regularly in clinical work. Not in Platonic language, but the logic is the same. A veteran operating by rules that kept him alive in combat (hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, treating ambiguity as threat) was formed by excellent conjurers. His drill sergeants were devoted professionals. The firelight they provided was precisely calibrated for the environment it was designed for. Back home, that same firelight is destroying his marriage and his sleep. The 608e question is not whether the original light source was good. It is whether it is preserving and benefiting him now.

The answer to that question is almost always something the person already knows. They just haven't had permission to ask it out loud.

Turning Toward the Sun

What distinguished Socrates was not that he had escaped the cave. It was that he never stopped questioning whether the light by which he saw was firelight or sunlight. His famous claim—that he knew he did not know (Apologia 21d)—was not false modesty. It was the recognition that his own carefully tended beliefs were not necessarily sun-wisdom. The philosophical life, on this reading, is not a destination. It is a practice: perpetual questioning of the light sources we inhabit, testing each one against what preserves and benefits rather than destroys and corrupts.

Each of us carries fires we did not light. The question is not whether we can escape them entirely. It is whether we are willing to hold them up to scrutiny—and keep turning, however slowly, toward a warmer light.

Read more:

https://t.co/iVVQppWT2n

[Gutter Sam🐈♀️🎨 @lifeinthegutter]

New site launched for my music project -
ASTRAL DREAM MACHINE

Link in comments ⬇️

#witchhouse #glitch #occult #electronicmusic

[Haltse @haltse]

I don't trust these systems. I have been back and forth with @Allstate for a year over a constant speeding warning per trip. The company that provides their geodata incorrectly lists the road at the end of my drive with a speed limit way lower than the posted limit. And apparently, they are powerless to stop it. (cough BS) The absolute worst thing about these apps? Can't have your passenger change the music or let the kid play games on phone. It's a crappy system when you can't question it, even when you know, and they know it's wrong.

[Jasmine Keith @Jasmine_Keith]

I started looking online to get car insurance quotes and Progressive requires me to agree to:

1) all drivers must download an app to track and monitor driving habits

OR

2) Plug in a device to track driving habits

How about GFY?

[Haltse @haltse]

New fun. Person posts some consumer story were a large company could do better, people pile on calling OP idiot for not being aware of how business in society works and if they don't like it, build their own, bank, airline,phone. Ask Grok to look back over the critics past 10 posts for hypocrisy , e.g, their complaining about similar.. Its about 80% of posters. Faith in people confirmed;)

[The Body Language Book Club @BodyLanguage_BC]

Meet Avinoam Sapir, courtesy of @SusanIbitz, - The Mind Behind SCAN, the Original Statement Analysis Method - this Weds Feb 11th 12:15pm, Central time https://t.co/yg27Kxvh3b

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

Scott Adams Celebration of Life 01/25/26 https://t.co/ApIvbDqI5Q

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

You all said: "Once your book is available for pre-order, I swear that I'll do so right away." Be true to your word, pre-order it now!

https://t.co/y1CqM1P9Xt

[Haltse @haltse]

Been a tad down this week. re listening to the audio book over the weekend.

[Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec]

No way

[Darren O'Neill - Outside Chiraq ⚡ @darrenoneill]

#ITM - It's Thanksgiving here in the United States and the Best Damn Podcast in the Universe shows up to enhance your life! They could be kicking back and overloading on mutton and mead, but they're here.

🚨 SUPPORT THE SHOW - TUNE IN NOW! 🚨

[Haltse @haltse]

Soda Pop Soldier is a great story, good narration if into audiobooks, & best of all, when it ends, there's a sequel. Then Ctrl Alt Revolt, and then you probably need a bookshelf :) The End of the World as We Knew It, great audio performance in a genre, zombie, I usually dislike

[Nick Cole @RealNickCole]

The Future became more than just a game...
Soda Pop Soldier https://t.co/bCGGXNi9sj #Amazon via @Amazon