Constant Fractal
@nfb42.bsky.social
Fan of reading, writing, gaming and all that!
Beginning to feel like I need to budget a week on the blog for a military primer on 'how the US Navy is the load-bearing pillar of your ability to eat bananas and of folks in developing countries to eat at all.' Not saying that is an optimal situation, merely that it is the situation.
The problem is that as we're seeing with the Strait of Hormuz, "the USA forfeits its global ambitions" does not lead to a new age of peace and sunshine, but to global recession and instability. The Strait of Hormuz is not the only load-bearing instance of US power backstopping modern economies.
@tupolev22m.bsky.social · 10h agoI think the traditional answer is actually "forfeit your global ambitions because you can't afford them and voters won't make the sacrifices necessary to restore them," unfortunately
If anyone is specifically going to Istanbul to look at East Roman bits, I highly recommend Sergei Ivanov's In Search of Constantinople: A Guidebook through Byzantine Istanbul and Its Surroundings. It covers almost every monument, all the relevant context, and how to find it.
honestly, the fact that we have made it through the atomic age *without* another use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is a miracle we don't fully appreciate
Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · yesterdayToday is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:
When an RPG looks like productivity software, you know it's the good shit
⚡Game*Spark⚡@gamespark.jp · 22h ago【1,650円→660円】クラシックで自由なRPG『ルナティックドーン 前途への道標』Steamで60%オフ！ほか『ATLAS』などもセール中
me descending on threads to serenely block ultra-aggro reply guys, not even coming close to forming an attachment
Gamers only want one thing, and that is to build a farm to produce grain, then a mill to produce flour, then a bakery to produce bread, and then a marketplace to distribute it to the people
For the curious, the term for 'clever trick in war' is a 'strategem' and multiple ancient writers wrote books listing them, most notably Frontinus and Polyaenus, whose works are both titled Strategemata ('Strategems'). Read those, pick one that fits the situation and go for it.
JUST IN: Staff reportedly increasingly concerned that companies are hiring them for the value of their output, as opposed to their wellbeing and development.
Max P III@blackballer.bsky.social · 2d agoIts embarrassing how many grown ass adults live in these fantasies where people work for some nonsense like the artificial cultures oligarchs manufacture over survival.
The biggest technological revolution of our lifetime and it has nothing to do with AI, crypto, metaverse, robots or any of the other massively hyped "tech" the media always talks about instead
Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d agoAbsolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West
A little Roman octopus to wish you a happy week! 🐙❤️ From a Roman villa mosaic at Villaquejida, León, Spain. Limestone, AD 100-200. Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid 📷 by me #MosaicMonday #Archaeology
to keep functioning a society must discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · 2d agoCBS reports US officials telling them there are no new negotiations planned with Iran despite what Trump is publicly claiming. We seem to be reaching the point where some in the administration are considering throwing Trump under the bus.
Anyway, everyone should read this: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Between nationalism and civilizationism: the European populist moment in comparative perspective
This paper argues that the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe form a distinctive cluster within the wider north Atlantic and pan-European populist conjuncture. They are distinctive i...
tandfonline.com
@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 3d agoFrom a historical perspective it's a genuinely strange state of affairs that the Church of England turns out to be too woke for much of the modern right. But really it just feels like: having a consistent moral code that demands taking Lessers and Outgroup seriously is impossible for populist right.
To add on to the history here. Much of the "bioweapons panic" comes out of 1990s testimonials after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath, many in the West (not least in the National Security establishment and the prestige journalist space) went looking for the next big scary thing.
Calliope@calliope5431.bsky.social · 3d agoThe breathless coverage is almost more insulting than the book itself, including a *New Yorker* article which cheerfully talks about the doomsday scenario of "smallpox bacteria" (it's a virus) being spliced with other pathogens, and the "horror" of a 2019 fire at VECTOR (which did nothing).
Last piece of the vicious cycle: it is in the far right parties' interest that these kinds of events happen again & again. These parties live off a (perceived) immigration crisis, and their political incentives are to ensure crises happen, even when orchestrated by Europe's adversaries.
I think this is key, and so much modern media discourse fails because it lets the right-wing get away with obfuscating the difference between severity and consistency, which is just the educational expression of the distinction between authoritarianism and rule of law.
Nathan@nwylabour.bsky.social · 3d agoMy general view, and there are many teachers who share this view, is that the *consistency* of the behaviour policy is far more important than its severity. And consistency matters day to day for individual teachers, but also across the whole school. Senior leaders have to maintain it.
I don’t really want to get into this with people who feel this way, but i don’t think this is a good thing! We don’t need to behave this way! It’s not healthy to approach academic discourse as an exercise in harshness!
i am mostly not interested in etymology as a source of secret meaning, which i consider faux intellectual nonsense in the majority of cases, but what i definitely do like to know is when people start to need words for what things and concepts
humans aren't naturally particularly good or bad. the great labor of each of our lives is to *make* ourselves good, and help the people around us do the same so that someday together we can build a better world. Being awful to random people online constantly just drags you & the world the other way
@gigercat.bsky.social · 6d agocontrary to what much of this site believes, your actions (in addition to, and more than your intent) matter and will modify who you are. treating people online like shit will eventually make you a worse person IRL. in order to be good you have to practice at being good.
it’s never a great sign for your society when all the competent people who believe in doing a good job for the sake of it conclude that they’re actively being punished for these qualities, while malignantly stupid criminals are making bank
as a kid i imagined the typical CEO as being this cigar-chomping man in a pinstripe suit yelling "get those numbers up, no excuses" actually so many of them are just fad-chasing losers
your apartment, the sport of basketball, and the Republic of Korea are all social constructs. mere recognition of this fact does not actually make the question of whether you are standing in your own apartment, playing basketball, or a Korean national up in the air until settled by op ed editors
(8) I tend to imagine ressourcement more in terms of “what if we read Origen and this helped free us from the bonds of Neo-Scholasticism?” (Origen is not worried about it, he’s before that, but we are.) (9) I’m not sure I saw sincerity as an instrument for such transformations. But it works. Fin.
I think Americans consistently assume that because they know nothing about other countries other countries know nothing about them, and nothing could be further from the truth
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · last wk.Always tricky to try to read the strategic thinking of another country by past experience, but Iran has, over the last ~4 decades, repeatedly shown an awareness of the US political calendar - gutting Carter, getting max leverage out of late-term Obama, etc. Push to Nov. is an obvious move.
so the question is: who will be in charge of the right-wing now? and the answer seems to be: the fascists you might've called the 80s and 2000s right "fascists," but you were wrong. these people are very different in ways that will become readily aparent.
