Home » Open thread 9/23/21

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Open thread 9/23/21 — 38 Comments

  1. Neo: c’mon! Your admirers throng restively in hopes of an audience.

    And BTW your site is top of league.

  2. I had a darkroom as a kid. (Millennials: see analog photography.)

    There is a trick called “solarization” that I tried it a few times. It looked just like the negative of Neo’s image above. I think, if you solarized the negative itself (never tried it), instead of the positive paper, would would look about the same Neo’s image.

  3. Tommy Jay: I never tried that trick of solarization but I read about it (Time/Life series of books on Photography in the 1970s, whodathunkit. Yes, a similar “feel” to the image here, but I think achieved by graphite on paper, not a download of photons onto a chemical preparation…

  4. Owen,
    I don’t claim to know what it really is. I’m sure there is a digital version of solarization and I may have stumbled across it in the past.

    Notice the thicker hair curls next to Neo’s jaw line. They have a heavy dark outline, but are hollowed out, or white in the middle. The eye highlight is also hollowed out as are a couple other things. That looks like solarization.
    _____

    This was kind of interesting at Am. Thinker.

    What Will Democrats Do about the Maricopa County 2020 Election Audit?

    No hard information on Maricopa, but the author looks at the history of people getting caught messing up elections in Florida as a possible predictor of things to come in AZ.

  5. I suspect this is a photo run through one of the many filters included with Adobe Photoshop or similar.

    This is a good time to state this is the single best blog I visit everyday, both the quality of of our host’s posting, and the commentary it attracts.

    And it’s great our semi-enigmatic host holds her apple a little lower this time, so we can see her better.

  6. I like this, but it looks to me that the hand is a bit wider — even too wide. Is that just my eyes playing tricks. or do others see that too?

  7. https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/09/covid-and-world-balance-of-power-unholy.html

    Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
    who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
    who rules the World-Island commands the world.
    — Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 150

    So much for Alfred Thayer Mahan then, eh? Go to the back of the class, Alfie!

    Maybe not quite that simple. No reason it has to be a single entity. And there’s a bit too much of a tendency to ascribe malice aforethought to emergent behavior and smart pragmatic self-interest on the fly.

    But while the Children were hiding under their beds and ruled over by geriatric fools, the Adults Elsewhere were busy doing serious stuff. You know like thinking ahead past dinner time. Goddam cheating, IP-thieving copycat fascist Nazis! How dare they?

    PS: Did anyone see Boris Johnson clowning around making a fool of himself at the UN with his muppet show speech?

  8. Another day, another Hunter Biden email leak. The main takeaways here:

    – Back in 2015, Hunter was requesting $2 million as a “retainer” as part of an effort to help “recover” billions of frozen Lybian assets.

    – Beyond the retainer, Hunter also wanted a cut of whatever was successfully (++++) recovered

    – These emails are evidently not from the laptop trove, but from some other source.

    – This “deal” doesn’t seem to have gone through.

    But whatever. As per usual, I’m sure our amazing media will doubtless collectively plug their ears whilst humming loudly. And our tech overlords will quietly work to suppress the story in search indexes.

  9. F, I think there are two things going on with that hand. Mainly, there’s foreshortening — the hand is closer to the camera than Neo’s face, and thus looks disproportionately large in comparison. And second, the apple is positioned so that it blocks the edge of Neo’s palm and thumb, creating an illusion that both just continue indefinitely back there.

    It’s still a nice picture.

  10. On the picture –

    It’s one of the photos I took a couple of years ago when I redid the blog and changed the blog photo. It’s been run through a special effects thingee that I believe is called “pencil sketch.” Simply put, it makes photos look like pencil sketches.

    The large hand was in the original photo, and was a consequence of taking a selfie and holding the cellphone camera too close. Thus, the distortion.

  11. “What Homeland Security has to do with Gorebal warming is beyond any sane person.”

    Well, here goes (not that I make any claims to sanity, mind you)…

    IIRC, the Narrative(TM) claims that most if not all the world’s crises are the result of Gorebull warning (AKA Anthropogenic Gorebull Warming (AGW), AKA Climate Change).

    Ergo, all those terribly unfortunate people are fleeing their homes and trying to get into the US because….yep, you guessed it! Gorebull warning is making their lives miserable, unlivable, desperate…

    To be sure, the Narrative(TM) makes a lot of claims…

    Another one, which is being revived by “Biden” (AKA Obama2.0) is that Gorebull warning is America’s (and the world’s) most vicious, most treacherous, most fiercest, most terriblest enemy.
    Needless to say, this is why “Biden”—following Obama’s illustrious example—must further gut the military, make COVID vaccinations compulsory (these last two are of course related) and retool the Armed Forces, train it meticulously and prepare it Chindittingly so that it has the wherewithal to do valorous vorpal battle with the diabolical Jabberwockic and treacherous Bandersnatchious foe.

    BTW, it’s also why “Biden” had to valiantly (not to mention victoriously) “withdraw” from Afghanistan…and also why he had to blame “his” valiant, victorious “withdrawal” on Donald Trump. (To be fair to “Biden”, though, everything is Trump’s fault…just as for Obama, everything was Dubya’s….)

    AGW is also the reason for galloping inflation (not that anyone should worry, since it’s only transitory, er, make that permanently transitory…but transitory nonetheless); still, who cares about inflation when you have to battle climate change?

    AGW is also why there is so much violence in Democratic Party-governed cities; why Black Lives Matter and antifa can never be wrong (or criticized). It’s why White folks are both fragile and unabashedly racist, both meek and violent, both confused and single-minded in their hatred of anything who is not White. (And it’s also why it’s impossible for anyone who is not White to be a racist.)

    Well you get the picture… AGW can be extremely useful.
    It’s the ideological equivalent of quack medicine. Good for Everything. Cures every ailment. Helps make society more equal. The quintessence of morality and human rights.

    (If only one could bottle it and sell it….)

  12. I don’t know if this has ever come up before, but is the photo a hommage (or gag-reference) to Magritte?

  13. Neo indicated the method she used, and there are many different apps/tools etc., which will get you similar results.

    One of the most obvious is the “xerox” filter process, which can get you most of the way to the above (and is clearly the conceptual basis for many of the “pencil sketcher” apps).

    https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/118923/looking-for-ideas-how-to-create-this-effect-photocopied-degraded-xeroxed-bru

    This is a more advanced use of the effect in photoshop.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2652mOSqQ

    }}} I don’t know if this has ever come up before, but is the photo a homage (or gag-reference) to Magritte?

    YA THINK??? 😀 LOLOLOLOLOL 😀

  14. Bacesears:

    Yes, it is.

    If you go to the top banner and click on “bio,” you’ll see I’ve put in a link to an explanation. It’s here.

  15. That sets my mind at rest, and the best part for me is that you hold the apple in your hand instead of special-effects floating it somehow. The low-tech makes it more special than special, makes it you.

  16. Compare and contrast:
    Beijing’s “build build build”…
    https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/evergrande-crashes-as-china-dumps-build-build-build-playbook-20210922-p58txl

    …and Biden’s “build back better”…

    “Biden” has by the looks of it adopted the RHETORIC—and in too many cases, the POLICIES—of “Beijing”.

    (Maybe it’s time to ask Antony Blinken another question or two…even if one already knows what the answer will be….)

    File under: Antony who?

  17. What’s going on in China is the tech and other commercial Oligarchs are being cut down to size *and* the middle class is being buttressed by putting brakes on runaway spending on private tuition in pointless stressful ducation arms races, etc. and by clamping down on K-Pop/Drama driven male effeminacy fad.

    If any of you were only 40 years old and had to worry about your offspring, you’d wish you had a Xi handy.

    Needless to say, Americans set in their ways will call it Maoism 2.0 or something.

    Really all it is is the CCP / Xi ensuring that there is one ultimate source of authority in the country and that this locus of power more or less maps accurately onto the official Org Chart so that there’s no confusion. I’m firmly with Moldbug when it comes to the idea that political and social chaos eventually ensures when real world manifestations of Power do not cohere with what’s written on the constitutional box.

    Now do you think that Jack Dorsey had more or less power than Donald Trump in early January 2021?

    The Chinese Learn. They’re inside the West’s OODA loop and doing pirouettes. Also they should feel grateful because all they have to do is sit back watch whatever Western ruling elites do and cross those choices off the list because pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. Makes life so much simpler.

    *YOU* have the Cultural Revolution 2.0 going on right now. Worry about that, Munchkins.

    The guy who *was* doing Mao 2.0 type machinations in order to try to get to the top in China is Bo Xilai — ex Boss of Chongqing whose wife was tied up in all kinds of commercial shenanigans with UK Secret Service dude who she eventually had to get whacked. Long and dirty sordid tale now mostly memory-holed.

  18. There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.

    I like the picture 🙂

  19. If only you were younger and had a benevolent despot to rule over you, like Xi.

    Got that rubes and proles, some are fit for the saddle by birth, others are fitted from birth to be ruled by those in the saddle. See T. Jefferson and other unexceptional Americans.

  20. Is Kyrsten Sinema positioning herself to be the next (moderate) Bernie Sanders with a run for the Presidency in 2024?

  21. Nice image. Has that classic “Sixties” pop art vibe to it.

    Speaking of classics – I looked again at a famous Men of Ideas video from the 1970’s which I have left here before; (shown as I recollect on American public broadcasting or maybe the CBC in the early 80’s) and, if any snippet concerning what we call the guiding intellectual Spirit of the [an] Age deserves regular review, it is found in this remark.

    A classic admission that bears reviewing

  22. The drawing shows her right eye more open, perhaps even almost naively accepting of what she sees; whereas in the official photo she is looking over the apple (as a shield) but also slightly squinting, suggesting skepticism and critical thinking, prior to acceptance. Maybe even a hint of cunning. And that is why we come here, to learn what she perceives.

    The selected blog photo is clearly the better choice.

  23. Zaphod on September 23, 2021 at 11:30 pm said:

    @DNW:

    Give him 10/10 for no word salad! According to Wikipedia he once put Mike Tyson in his place re ungentlemanly conduct at a party.

    And now for something completely different:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)

    I’ll have to go over this (personally study it later) at some length. Quine of course, was a member of the same “circle” in which Ayer learned his youthful logical positivism.

    But it seems – at least as I understood it – that Quine quickly migrated to the study and analysis (actually creation, if you ask me) of logic, or better logics; i.e., coherent symbolic systems of reference; or maybe better, as he never seemed interested in real content, of self consistent symbolic systems or calculus.

    He seemed, as best I remember to be disinterested in keeping logic tied in much of anyway to natural language.

    The reference with regard “quines” i.e., the Quine paradox built out of grammatically indirect references, it is is something I will look over.

    The famous liar’s paradox to which the wiki source claims it is related, is familiar to us all, as it would be to any second year philosophy student.

    And I am one who agrees that the problem was a false problem and basically dissolves if the proper parameters are added to what is essentially an ambiguously constructed subject predicate form proposition.

    I don’t even think that one needs a theory of types, ramified or otherwise to deal with it. Though the idea of levels of discourse does suggest itself. But then, “levels” is itself misleading as an image. Perhaps layers or some expression that clearly expresses the recursion or self-reference problem wherein the mystery is generated by a violation of the use rules for formulating well constructed sentences.

    I’ll have to take another look, as I said. Been 30 years, LOL

  24. “@DNW:

    Give him 10/10 for no word salad! According to Wikipedia he once put Mike Tyson in his place re ungentlemanly conduct at a party.”

    You ought to be able to find his, “A Part of My Life” in the Internet reminder bins online.

    I may be mistaken, but I think I had read that there. Quite a funny anecdote.

    Two other things also were amusing. Like Russel he seems to have had a unrequited – at least in an extended sense – sexual infatuation with a woman who grew tired of him. In Ayer’s case rather more quickly.

    But both of these clowns (in that regard at least) were so pathetic in their neediness and so dog-like in their guilt free tail wagging, panting enthusiasm that it shocks even those of us who grew up in the meat market bars of the 1980s and 90s. Geez, guy, have you no effen self-respect?

    Another fun fact was that Ayer was not actually prepared to teach Plato in any depth, when he received the assignment.

    A philosopher, who does not have a thorough grounding in the basic literature, is a philosopher flying on one wing.

  25. “Two other things also were amusing. Like Russel he seems to have had a unrequited – at least in an extended sense – sexual infatuation with a woman who grew tired of him. In Ayer’s case rather more quickly.”

    I should have written ” ….Like Russel[l] he seems to have had a[n] unreciprocated – at least in an extended sense – sexual infatuation with a woman who grew tired of him. In Ayer’s case rather more quickly.”

    “Unrequited” is correct, but might convey the impression that neither of these fellows actually bedded his obsession.

    In Ayer’s case it was with some woman he met in a taxi, as I recall. In the case of Russell, it was Lady Lascivious Morsel or someone. Apparently he had a case of halitosis.

    Ah, those freethinkers. Yeah, good plan to follow where they lead. Sure to turn out well. Especially if when the fantasy proves bankrupt, you are insulated by class, institution, and wealth.

  26. @DNW:

    Too scatter-brained here to be any good at philosophy, but mental filing system of useless trivia immediately figured it was Lady Ottoline Morell without even knowing much of anything about her other than that she Was a Bloomsbury Thing Back Then. So looked her up in the usual place.

    Imagine my surprise to find that she’d banged Axel Munthe! Now there’s a name. Everyone should go read the Story of San Michele.. I know they should because the Folio Society Press once told me to read it and so I did and I saw that it was good. Lots of gallivanting around on Capri without the Little Fishes. He was Bigger than Ben Hur for a literary moment or two. Kind of a Laurens van der Post but less full of shit.

    Good thing about the Bloomsburyites is that one goes off and clicks on links and ends up wanting to go embrace the first Rabbi one meets. All is forgiven! Well, mostly. My God… enough rot and dysfunction in the native stock without anyone else needing to stick an oar in.

    On topic of Elite Degeneracy, one tale I especially enjoyed is about one of the Pre-Raphaelites taking up with an actual milk-maid, making her his muse, expensively educating her privately, and then she cuckolded him with his best friend. See if I can bestir myself to google and get the details.

  27. By the way Neo, I like that silver point style outline as well as any images of you I have seen thus far. It would make a superior avatar.

    The eyes are open, calm, and relatively youthful looking. Toitysomethin

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