Leo

Lawyer and dad. Reading and hacking for fun. I like self-roasted coffee, Nietzsche and vector search.

[Leo @leoplusx]

> [T]he tariff was a system of laws, hallowed for decades by successive Republican administrations, which levied high duties on imported goods in order to protect American industry and provide revenues for the federal government. So vast were these revenues (about two-thirds of the nation’s income) that a surplus had been building up in the Treasury every year since 1879.

—Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

[Leo @leoplusx]

@GuruFinanz So, it's April now. Did you buy? I'm in the same boat.

[Leo @leoplusx]

YouTube‘s algo at its finest 😅

[Leo @leoplusx]

Taylor Swift is the Donald Trump of music. No wonder she resents him.

[Leo @leoplusx]

> The knowledge that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

How odd of our time that so few people feel the same way about the Elon Musks of this world. And who, on the contrary, see the railroad man not as an example for, but an enemy of the citizens.

[Leo @leoplusx]

> In America’s last fight against totalitarianism, President Franklin Roosevelt had demanded the unconditional surrender of both Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In the context of total war, against implacable dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo, Roosevelt’s insistence on unconditional surrender made strategic sense. Such a demand did not fit the Cold War. Much as Reagan looked to Roosevelt and World War II as a model for how the free world should confront dictatorships in thrall to evil ideologies, in the case of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, calling for “unconditional surrender” from Moscow would have been delusional and foolhardy—especially since Reagan remained desperate to prevent the Cold War from turning hot and ending in nuclear apocalypse.

William Inboden, The Peacemaker

[Leo @leoplusx]

@jasondebolt @VintageRockN_85 The socialist thing is so weird to me. Also in tech people. It's the strangest thing to me. There you are, on Hacker News. Intelligent dudes talking backpropagation and separation of concerns. And then they say communism would be a good thing to have.

[Leo @leoplusx]

@jasondebolt @VintageRockN_85 Guys whining about losing their girlfriends, wallowing in feelings of inadequacy and neediness... what a weird form of spiritual service young men are made to attend in our culture.

[Leo @leoplusx]

The left emphasizes environmental sustainability, but in economics they're happy to apply a “plunder now” mindset.

Tax the rich, hand-out to the needy - who cares what will be left for future generations, both in terms of wealth and ambition.

[Leo @leoplusx]

Communism seeks to share the fish while despising the fisherman.

[Leo @leoplusx]

> Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

[Leo @leoplusx]

Carl Sagan, 1995:

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

[Leo @leoplusx]

Modern news works like the old church sermon: it offers ready-made narratives of sin and virtue.

Headlines, images, and short clips are engineered for emotional uptake.

They present:
•a victim (elicits compassion),
•a villain (elicits anger),
•and a call to righteousness (share, denounce, boycott).

That rhythm gives the consumer a micro-dose of moral purpose.

So the cultural environment continually rewards certainty, not curiosity.

[Leo @leoplusx]

“I had long known that it was impossible for a journalist to convey 100 percent of the truth, but I didn't realize to what extent the truth is distorted, both by the intentions of the journalist and by neglect. I don't mean just the interpretations of what happened; I also mean the facts. The reporting about Sharon and the murders was virtually criminal. Reading the papers, I could not believe my eyes. I could not believe my eyes! They blamed the victims for their own murders. I really despise the press. I didn't always. The press made me despise it.”
—Roman Polanski, 1971

[Leo @leoplusx]

I agree. What's best for people, both European and Ukraine/Russian, doesn't seem to play any role, at all.

For Germans, what's driving their decision mostly seems to be their Hitler trauma:

Talking to Putin - a dictator! who invaded another country! - doesn't fit their "We have learned our lesson" narrative.

But Munich and Chamberlain loom so large in their minds that they can't see beyond. For example, to WW1. Which was a stalemate, and a meatgrinder, like Ukraine is today, and which was also perpetuated because "being right" was considered more important than "getting along", and "not compromising with evil" was worth more than the human lives wasted in those trenches.

You hear "Europe", and you think humanists, Erasmus, borderless travel. And yet, so far, 100% of World Wars started here. And 100% of them were ended only thanks to intervention from outside.

[Leo @leoplusx]

@jasondebolt "You're spreading hate. For that, I hate you."

🏆 Brain award.

[Leo @leoplusx]

"All this hate has got to stop. I'm going to murder the guy."

—Soundest reasoning since Aristotle

[Leo @leoplusx]

Your suppressed violence argument also seems apt, looking at these assassins:

Young 20-something. Male. No girlfriend. Still live at home. Their desire for power lived out in the shadows, on Reddit and in computer games.

It may not even be political at all. It may just be that the act of murder is, for them, a way to cast themselves as the hero who saved humanity from Hitler.

The cause may just be the excuse. Just like, when you write a thriller, you need to pick a villain. The real driver may just be the desperation for power. For being, for once, the hero, and the one who gets to shape history rather than being just an NPC.

Like, "I can't build rockets, and I don't have the patience to run for public office - but I sure can kill someone (from afar, without risk to myself, thanks to a rifle engineered by someone else)".

It may be a problem of narcissim more than anything else. The dark side of what Jung called the Peter Pan syndrome in those who never felt initiated into the circle of the adults who run the world.

[Leo @leoplusx]

@barryeisler Can you even call it irony if someone who believes to defend democracy against fascism KILLS the person who is literally on the scene to debate political issues in public?

[Leo @leoplusx]

It's time to retire the terms "right" and "left". They've done more harm than good.

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "All my friends are anti-right". That makes it sound heroic. If it said "I'm only friends with people I agree with", the impression would be less charitable.