Messages

1

Aneristic Illusions / Re: UNLIMITED 2020 THREAD

« on: Today at 03:45:21 pm »

It's possible to vote for Biden, and rip the Democratic party a fresh asshole.

Look, if you believe that posting things on the internet influences people's behavior,

then you've gotta recognize that loudly ripping on the democratic candidate advances specific political outcomes. Amongst them is people's likelihood to vote for that candidate.

If you do not want those specific outcomes to happen, then it follows that you should not engage in speech which contributes to them.

2

Aneristic Illusions / Re: UNLIMITED 2020 THREAD

« on: Today at 02:17:20 pm »

Also..

President Trump welcomed Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to the presidential race by blasting her as “extraordinarily nasty” and one of the “most liberal” members of the Senate.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-blasts-kamala-harris-as-nasty-231131879.html

 

Right out of the box Trump takes the bait. That ain't Hillary Clinton. The usual attack pattern just makes him more obviously an idiot to the center right looking for a way out..

I'm surprised he didn't call her "uppity".

As a teacher, I'm not sure I can forgive her for the truancy law (if a kid misses too much school, they parents can end up in jail) and frankly a fair bit of her other shit, but Kopmala or not I have a slightly smaller list of reservations about a Biden administration. He's clearly losing his fucking marbles and she's sharp as a tack.

I'm okay with lunatic Biden, though.

Okay. I hate him. Frankly I hope he dies shortly after he takes office bc Kopmala is at least all there, though I don't trust her further than I do him on a fair number of policy issues.

I can see that.

But I don't have peoples' best interests at heart.

I know, it's part of the wile Bond villain shtick, no?

Mostly it's because the progressives went from "resting position" to "I'M NOT VOTING" in 2 hours.

Fuck the progressives, and fuck the rest of us for letting the Goddamn progressives in the party.

If they flake out, AND THEY WILL, motherfuckers are on their own.  I am utterly uninterested in what happens to them during the upcoming nightmare Trump second term. 

A fucking plague on them.

Good goddess giddyup! I feel it

I think maybe the people we're pissed at aren't exactly progressives though

progressives aren't wrong for wanting criminal justice reform, universal health care, etc--and don't deserve any flack for that. We need that.

99% of my progressive friends are voting Biden even if he shoots a woman on 5th avenue, using his penis


I'm pissed at the people who lose focus too easily -- the perfect purity party -- the people who would rather Trump get reelected than us put forward an imperfect challenger. Those people are not progressive.

3

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Calling it now: Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2016.

« on: Today at 01:59:31 pm »

As per Propublica, she has voted with Bernie 93% of the time in the Senate

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/H001075-kamala-harris/compare-votes/S000033-bernard-sanders/115

ooooh that's the sweet spot, thank you

feel like my blood pressure just normalized a little bit

4

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Calling it now: Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2016.

« on: Today at 01:21:00 pm »

I'm with you -- I need to stay off facebook today.

there is VERY valid criticism of Kamala Harris
but in this moment, all of it strikes me as progressives convincing each other not to vote

5

Apple Talk / Re: PICS VIII: 10% LARGER THAN PICS VII

« on: August 10, 2020, 04:40:11 pm »

6

Aneristic Illusions / Re: UNLIMITED 2020 THREAD

« on: August 07, 2020, 04:44:55 pm »

I always remember Jon Stewart's point on Crossfire, when they were needling him about whether John Kerry was the best possible choice to represent democrats.

And he basically said  "elections are not about who is best at governing.. elections are about who is best at winning elections."

7

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Re: Reality Safari: Gurdjieff

« on: August 07, 2020, 03:02:41 pm »

No blame for dropping it. It's a difficult, demanding book. And the intro really intends to dissuade and throw off the casual reader. I've been reading it for almost 3 years and I'm only 2/3rds of the way through.

8

High Weirdness / CIA Declassifications in 2020

« on: August 07, 2020, 02:55:34 pm »

The CIA declassified information relating to:

-Transcendental meditation
-Chakras and energetic centres in the body
-Astral Travel
-Parallel Universes
-Stargates and portals

Links:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/nsa-rdp96x00790r000100030004-1

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf



I haven't gone through these links myself, but I thought we might have fun digging through these Weird Shit papers and seeing if we can shake anything out.

9

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Re: Reality Safari: Gurdjieff

« on: August 07, 2020, 02:20:10 pm »

I wanted to drop this here --

http://www.doremishock.com/beelzebub/TheCosmologyofBeelzebub.html

it's an essay on Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson. Briefly, it describes the nature and role of the Cosmology presented in this book.

As an aside, because this is a Discordian forum, I want to mention the Discordian cosmology -- that the Principia Discordia (and to some extent, the Illuminatus! trilogy) gives us this story for what's going on in the universe. There was chaos, then there was stuff, it accretes into bureaucracy, then collapses into aftermath. In this world of human drama, we've got the curse of greyface, these scattered theophanies of Eris, individual papacy, the correspondence between Hermes and St. Gulik... stuff like that. It doesn't matter whether it's literally true or not, it's describing an arrangement of ideas. To be a Discordian (to some extent) is to interpret and internalize these ideas in a way that affects your inner being. In this context, we can see Cosmology as a tool for alignment, a way of organizing a contact between the big outer world and the subtle inner being.

The Cosmology presented in Beezlebub's Tales describes an incomplete universe, one in need of maintenance and repair. It also describes the human psyche as incomplete, in need of maintenance and repair. These things are broken and incomplete in symmetrical ways.

That is to say -- all these things happening at a global level --  It's also happening within us on a personal level. Our task is to join the two.

Here in the year 2020, I am reflecting on how I can unseat the Donald Trump in my heart. For I, too, am governed by a materialistic narcissist, a petty tyrant and strongman dictator, a dominator and coward, who often overrides my better nature. Trump's power doesn't come from him, it comes from similar energies present within all of us.

How, then, can we approach this idea of cosmology, of meaning, harmony, and order, and incorporate it into a personal meaning that has daily relevance? Simply adopting a form and creating a set of rituals that acknowledge our position — which is what religion does, offering significant solaces but no truly practical solutions— isn’t enough. There needs to be a physical, emotional, and intellectual component to cosmology.

Our cosmology, in other words, must become not just an abstraction or a philosophical exercise, but a cosmology of the psyche....

This challenge asks us to transpose ideas of the cosmos at large onto the template of our own being. As “cosmoses in miniature,” as Gurdjieff called us, we contain within ourselves and our being the same origins, catastrophic collision events, and disharmonizations present in the cosmos-at-large, as well as the obligations for repair that devolve upon the angelic hierarchies in Beelzebub’s Tales. This is, in our own case, a do-it-yourself universe; just as God cannot interfere with the cosmos in Beelzebub (even if He could, it’s entirely uncertain He would know what to do), He cannot directly interfere with our own lives. It’s up to us to undertake the necessary work for cosmic maintenance and repair: hence, theurgy, or inner work on behalf of God.

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Aneristic Illusions / Re: General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

« on: August 06, 2020, 05:03:54 pm »

Swan's expressions during that interview need to be given a cabinet position


also, the onion's take: 
https://www.theonion.com/d-c-journalists-in-awe-of-australian-reporter-able-to-1844620773

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Aneristic Illusions / Re: Random News Stories

« on: August 06, 2020, 05:03:14 pm »

This is gonna be FUN!

New York Attorney General Moves To Dissolve The NRA After Fraud Investigation
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899712823/new-york-attorney-general-moves-to-dissolve-the-nra-after-fraud-investigation

Attorney General Letitia James claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that she found financial misconduct in the millions of dollars, and that it contributed to a loss of more than $64 million over a three year period.

The suit alleges that top NRA executives misused charitable funds for personal gain, awarded contracts to friends and family members, and provided contracts to former employees to ensure loyalty.

Seeking to dissolve the NRA is the most aggressive sanction James could have sought against the not-for-profit organization, which James has jurisdiction over because it is registered in New York. James has a wide range of authorities relating to nonprofits in the state, including the authority to force organizations to cease operations or dissolve. The NRA is all but certain to contest it.

12

Apple Talk / Re: I don't know where the random links thread is

« on: August 06, 2020, 04:24:01 pm »

NSFW - AI-generated pornograpy

http://themachinegaze.com/

As algorithmic processing becomes more sophisticated and complex, and as more of it is refined and improved upon by the machines themselves, so we lose our ability to fully understand how inputs become outputs and how the ‘black box’ is ‘thinking’ - and where might that lead.

What do the machines see when they look at porn? What are we teaching them? What are they learning? And what does it teach us about what we have taught ourselves?

The Machine Gaze is an exhibition which explores the above questions through cutting edge technology, producing a body of work immediately recognisable and yet utterly alien, which provides a timely critique of what we’re teaching our machines, and how this might play out.

Utilising a number of machine learning techniques, including Generative Adversarial Networks, neural style transfer and Google ‘deep dream’, this collection presents machine re-interpretations of our hidden desires.

Featuring computer-generated artworks based on a corpus of pornography spanning printed magazines from the 1980s to user-generated clips uploaded to PornHub, Shardcore has created reframed Philip K Dick’s question - except rather than Electric Sheep, these 'androids' dreams are much fleshier in nature.

13

Apple Talk / Re: PICS VIII: 10% LARGER THAN PICS VII

« on: August 05, 2020, 10:00:25 pm »

if you get it, you get it

14

Aneristic Illusions / Re: General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

« on: August 05, 2020, 03:50:54 pm »

the axios interview made my brain leak out of my ear a little bit

in the past, we used to celebrate these "emperor's new clothes" moments

15

Techmology and Scientism / Re: Coronavirus data and events as they come in

« on: August 02, 2020, 02:08:58 pm »

the "jared let thousands die to make urban governors look bad" is one of those things that would have erupted into a volcano under any other president, but we're all so exhausted

on some level I'm furious, and on another level I'm like "yeah that checks out"