Leaked US-NATO Ukraine War Plans?, Western Diplomacy Failing in Developing World, The "Brawndo Tyranny", Journalistic Objectivity is Passe, Musician Branko Mataja
Laughed out loud to see pictures of the excerable US tool Von Der Leyen queue at standard Chinese departure gates with the masses and being obliged to show her passport. Chinese do not screw around. She was presumptuous and was taught a lesson.
The survey of journalism "leaders" favoring an end to newsroom objectivity shows the same lesson as your article about Georgia, where late-80s Soviet-bloc commies happily switched ideologies to maintain their political positions.
These people were never in it for the love of the news or whatever, they were in it to be big shots.
I think about this article, and then I think about what happened at Stanford Law a few weeks ago, and I can't help but conclude that the near future is going to get even uglier in the USA. Ideology uber alles.
The upper-middle class are potentially problematic for the regime. Elite overproduction makes them replaceable. Their ranks need to be diversified. Their ability to provide leadership to lower or subaltern classes needs to be reduced. The agenda of diversity, gender fluidity and racial equality destabilises them and prevents their incorporation into the populist movement (MAGA).
Apr 8, 2023·edited Apr 8, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The main rewarded talent in the upper-middle-class west for the last 40-60 years has been status-striving. The UMC will adopt the new status symbol even if it inflames hatred against...themselves. And their kids.
The attack on journalistic objectivity seems to be based on a twisted half truth. The 'objective' style of twentieth century official literature - not just journalism, but also especially scientific papers, think tank policy papers, etc. - demanded the stultifying 'voice from nowhere', in which all traces of authorial identify are stripped out, while the prose itself was rendered sterile and emotionless. The intent was to encourage an objective, analytical, just the facts mindset in both author and reader, but this has turned out to be a sham.
So, this new generation of journalists are rejecting this. Which isn't in and of itself a bad thing. But of course, they overcorrect - substituting 'lived experience' for an honest attempt to access the truth, and trying to cobble together their authorial voices from their intersectional identities. Ultimately it's a hamfisted misunderstanding.
Contrast that with the vitality of independent journalism. Reading you, or Taibbi, or Chris Bray, or eugyppius, just to give a few examples, there's no doubt that the words are coming from a specific person with a specific perspective on the world, who moreover is writing with a specific intellectual project in mind - not just to understand the world, but also to nudge it in a better direction. But because both hemispheres of your brains are functioning with some kind harmony, there's also the implicit understanding that there is actually a world to be understood, which can't be changed merely by manipulating symbols. Legacy media journalism school graduates don't seem to get this - they jump straight from 'an objective perspective is impossible' to 'objective reality doesn't really exist'. They're drunk on the insights of postmodernism, or maybe just too midwitted to grasp them.
Regarding the AI deep fake problem, yes in the short term this will be an issue. Long term, it will innoculate people to propaganda. When everything is suspect, nothing will be trusted, and the propagandists will find themselves pushing on a string.
Apr 8, 2023·edited Apr 8, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I think the attack on journalistic objectivity is more about about representativeness and the impossibility of perfect objectivity than tone. In both cases, the attack uses banal truisms as trojan horses to not just smuggle in but also to justify progressive bias.
Surely when talking about an LGBTQ issue, it is important to include an LGBTQ perspective. Talking to a coal miner is important when reporting on coal mining. Duh. And obviously perfect objectivity is impossible - this is some late night freshman weed induced philosophizing level of banal insight. Neither of these "insights" lead to the conclusion that media should abandon the pursuit of objectivity, but here we are.
I agree that the objective standard newsroom style leads to a false air of authority and objectivity. But stylistically I still prefer it to most independent reporter's writing. Most people including journalists simply aren't good writers and trying to write with an individual voice usually leads to worse writing than the standard AP style newsroom style writing. Journalists like Tom Wolf pulled it off because they were gifted writers. Taibbi and Greenwald for example are good journalists but mediocre writers. Their writing would benefit from an AP or NYT editor.
The internet age has led to the leveling of writing. Nearly everyone can write well enough to communicate, but there are very few gifted writers. The internet induced explosion of the written word has increased the value of writing for communication and devalued the artform of writing. It would be great if one of these exiled MSM journalist turned out to be a great writer, but I've not seen one yet.
I mostly agree with this, aside from the description of Taibbi as being a bad writer. 'A vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly shoving its blood funnel into anything that smells like money' is the kind of vivid, memorable, and accurate metaphor that only a good writer can develop.
As to the general quality of writing, yes, it's generally terrible. But how much of that is precisely because we're saturated with anonymous, officious prose that reads like it was composed by Commander Data?
I mostly agree with this, except for your embrace of "vivid... metaphor" and disdain(?) for "anonymous, officious prose." I much prefer SGT Joe Friday-style writing, leaving me to supply (type/degree of) metaphor if/where/when needed.
Griftopia is truly a great book, and the elites have it in for him ever since he lifted the veil. Brave man, and of course Frum that moral vacuum, is on the case now
But "surely when talking about an LGBTQ issue" - when what we're talking about is really a "TQ" issue, since that is where the problems arise - it is necessary to talk to the women, lesbians included, whose rights to single-sex spaces, sports, changing rooms, and more are disappearing. And to the parents who object to their children being taught the nonsensical "gender assigned at birth" denial of biological reality. But those viewpoints are silenced, declared "transphobic."
I think this is a fundamental problem with post modernism, and I'm increasingly convinced it's a desired outcome. Postmodernists, ironically, embraced Marxism so the notion of inspiring empathy and understanding between different groups (and ofcourse individuals) has been replaced with standpoint epistemology - the notion you must be this to understand that. It's tribal politics mixed with gnosticism, and as our man famously said "the worse, the better"
They are almost always seriously undereducated, rarely read anything written before 2010 unless it was on a compulsory reading list at college and they reduce postmodernism to poorly understood cliches. Also many journalists (especially in the prestige press) are legacy hires to begin with. The regime is not sending its best to the propaganda mills.
Far from not sending the best, the best are at each stage weeded out. They do not need our want intelligent, courageous, thoughtful, principled journalists. They want hacks that will do as they're told.
It's similar to the way some police departments reportedly have an upper limit for the acceptable IQ of recruits.
There are practical reasons for at least some of this. The wider culture has changed for the worse - difficult to control journalists would serve as a lightning rod for the regime's voluntary auxiliaries who enforce orthodoxies of all sorts. Companies that need to make a profit are not interested in the hassles.
The silver lining is that the regime-compliant institutions are hemorrhaging credibility and respect. The legacy media are now taken at face value only by the old or the loyalists.
They're essentially engaging in a form of shadowplay at this point - a vast game of make-believe where they and their cronies pretend that they're trusted sources and respected leaders, when the truth is that they're a running joke.
True but the play has a very serious dimension. It still manages to divert public attention. It also provides resources for regime supporters employed within it. The inanity of Clow World's self-understanding still confuses and disarms even very intelligent people. Meanwhile it is getting very serious. As the clowns caper, the thugs prepare their clubs and the gaolers their cells.
People who have lived through epoch-shaping events often recall episodes where they experienced a degree of unreality. IMO this is because there is a cognitive and emotional recalibration involved in which intuition prepares people for 'fight or flight' mode. We are certainly living through the first stages of something that is potentially pretty big.
Well said P. Compare it to the great songwriters from 60s I e. Dylan and Cohen, both Jews but with a vast hinterland in The Bible, New and Old Testaments, philosophy, poetry and prose of all ages, the time and place for analogy, simile, metaphor, satire....now they are mostly semi-literate goons. An English woman once asked me after listening to Dylan's Shelter From The Storm - she walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns - but why would anyone be wearing a crown made of thorns? Sigh. Point is the intellectual hinterland to compose that lyric. It was a given that Irish journalists had an intellectual hinterland also, beyond Super Mario, the simpler end of Marxism, rap, Marvel movies, and anything they can describe as dark and edgy.
You can't compare any cultural content today with what was produced by the last generation to be raised to adulthood before complete immersion in televisual entertainment became the norm. Reading copiously for pleasure and edification, supplemented with a schooling that emphasised parsing texts the old-fashioned way, is exceptionally rare.
It is a cultural break of unimaginable implications. The era that opened with Gutenberg (that made the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment possible) has ended. You can hear it in the way people speak. Vocabularies today are not as rich, sentences are not as well-structured and litererary allusions are getting rarer. The dumbing down demoralises me endlessly.
Televisual culture is wonderful but we need to develop a culture than constrains and disciplines its use.
Apr 8, 2023·edited Apr 8, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Hey John!
When I see the Junior Jacobins of the Soc Justice religion, I think they may be "drunk on the insights of postmodernism" (esp when it's boiled down to: any stifling of my desires is political oppression) but they're also drunk on the desperate need to inflict their "moral clarity" on us, meaning more or less life is not worth living to them if they can't attempt to personally destroy people through their favorite attack technique, the Bigotry Accusation.
For this generation of virtual zealots the Bigotry Accusation is what Elvis and hula hoops were to the 50s or what disco and polyester were to the 70s: all the cool kids are doing it and it feels too good to not get in on the party. Everything runs downstream from the desire to attack and destroy your perceived enemies.
Also, objectivity for a journalist is like mastery of your instrument to a musician or practiced meditation/prayer for a monk or priest, it requires years of dedication to a craft, which often must come before the self and its immediate needs.
But mastery, restraint, control and excellence are evil impositions of the white man, thus they will also need to be thrown onto the pyre.
Strongly agree on the long term effects of AI. It's a genie that won't be easy to put back in the bottle. The rollout will be used for unimaginable levels of propaganda but it won't take much for that to quickly turn around. However, we may be left with a population that rejects the propaganda but also has nothing to really believe in. Maybe that's harmless in the end or maybe that allows levels of tyranny we can't imagine
I'm sure it is more widespread than in my Irish homeland but up to 30 years ago, journalists very often did not have university degrees, but started at 17 or 18 straight from an excellent honours Leaving Cert (think Baccalaureate) and started with a regional newspaper. There they reported on the most local and banal of politics, sports, local news, local courts, where they met all classes and experienced human life in all its messiness and complexity. They were rigourously edited and if proficient, given more responsibility. After some time, they might apply for a job on a national publication. It was a real craft. Now it is people of the same haute bourgeoisie class who get a uni "degree" in "journalism". Just a bunch of clones involved in a pedantic, semi-literate groupthink. Wankers all, graduates of a course provided by failed leftist politicians and otherwise unemployable alcoholics. True cosmopolitans, loving every country except their own.
I am sure you have seen those videos of maybe 50 newscasters mouthing the exact same words. I am sure you know that the mainstream media is controlled by the oligarchs (6, I believe) who own them and that the CIA supplies the content. That they are propaganda, mind control for the masses, surely, you know that. So, what is this talk about "post-objectivism"?
Mind control for the dwindling masses who still trust mass media.
Echo chambers for those who still follow team sports.
The biggest block of voters these days call themselves independent.
Those people are politically homeless and the ministry of truth is scrambling how to influence them. They keep striking out, so they end up bunting and not getting far, or getting tagged out at first base.
Not sure what to make of that “leak” about the Ukraine conflict. Obviously spooked up. One interesting thing I did see from western intelligence is the strategic depth of Russian forces. It indicated they’re woefully undermanned along huge geographic areas. This actually rang true. They’re big problems in this war are lack of commitment and unwillingness to shake up their gerontocratic military command. The parts of their system that have performed well are their economic ministers and Wagner which runs itself like a corporation where there is a clear command structure and accountability. The head of Wagner has sounded alarm bells about a counteroffensive, I could very well see that succeeding just due to the structure of the Russian military in that nobody will step and risk accountability to say “hey somebody fucked up here, we don’t actually have enough troops near x”
Early on in the war when Zelensky was vacillating between spewing propaganda and telling actual truths, he let out something interesting and I think, poignant: he said that even if they expel all Russian forces from Ukraine, the Russians will just keep coming back.
Yes at the current state it’s slated really to be a bogged down mess for an indefinite period. The Russians aren’t competent or assertive enough to actually take enough territory to form a victory but are competent enough in other parts of their system where they’re not going to collapse. The US under its current admin also isn’t going to negotiate or cease aid
Idea: what if the Russians are happy with grinding the Ukes down along the present front lines instead of attempting big advances that would leave their forces exposed?
Given the current state of things you’re very correct. But does the fact that the realistic analysis a year in is “an attempt to actually win this war against a much smaller nation has a high chance of ending in devastating failure given our current force levels” beg the question why they are in that situation
Undermanned? Not for the task of stopping the Ukrainian attack on Donetsk and Lugansk that commenced in February 2022. Moscow expected Ukraine to act rationally and negotiate...which Kiev initially did before the assassination of the Ukrainian diplomat involved in the talks at Gomel (killed by Ukrainians curiously enough) and Boris Johnson's sabotage of the peace deal in Istanbul. It was not until after that the Russians began putting together a much larger army.
Prigozhin's comments on the Ukrainian counteroffensive may (or may not) be intended to muddy the waters. I doubt that the Stavka (Russian General Staff) makes strategic decisions on the bases of public deliberations/advice. So far the Russians appear to be winning, but I am not following things that closely and am not any kind of expert.
Collapse is necessary to wipe out the malinvestments, the best part is it will wipe out all those who benefitted by this unjust economy. I had the thought they will limit anyone to 250,000, but I don't think that will be acceptable to those with more. Ha! For the record, a couple thousand a month or so is nice money I know. But starting over from scratch even that won't be needed as there will not be much to buy.
I think a civil war would be over very quickly as it'll be those who own guns wiping out all those who don't believe in owning guns. I think taking away hunting rights would start it in a day.
"Newly minted millionaire" will mean billionaires who lost their fortunes.
Wiping out fortunes will be meaningless if the structures that enabled them still stand. Wall Street is plagued by financial parasites who use numerous schemes to strip companies of their value to line their pockets while producing nothing. Serious financial market reforms are overdue.
This all seems to me to be prototypical Russian military strategy. Dick around for a while playing with your food before eventually going all in. Finland seemed like they were doing pretty well in their conflict with the Red Army in 1939. Not so much 1940. That was obviously a much shorter conflict, but the spirit is there! 😄 Russia wins wars by brute survival and eventual overwhelming force. I see no reason to assume they can’t do that now, inasmuch as I’m able to believe anything I read about it outside this Substack.
On journalism:
Best to simply use my own eyes and my own brain. My own personal list of trusted news sources has been reduced to two and if they’re not talking about something, I don’t need to know about something. I’ll hear the air raid sirens no matter how much kvetching I engage in trying to divine their reasons prior to them going off. I don’t know if this strategy is brilliant or cowardly, but I do know that it’s about all I can handle.
I note that just this morning, it appears that the leaks are wider spread, which would argue against them being deliberate Regime disinformation, I think:
From William Tell to Emmett Till to the Til Eulenspiegel Society, in only a few hundred years, is noteworthy; but Brawndo to Branko in only a dozen paragraphs is hats-off respectable. (kudos for the link to "hyperfeminiztion") PS: In Hebrew, "Emmett" (אמת) means "Truth". I don't think it was invited to (or present for) the Congressional discussions.
lmfao
Laughed out loud to see pictures of the excerable US tool Von Der Leyen queue at standard Chinese departure gates with the masses and being obliged to show her passport. Chinese do not screw around. She was presumptuous and was taught a lesson.
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Also, Happy Easter to everyone who is observing Holy Week!
A Blessed Eastertide to you also Niccolo. He is arisen.
He is risen, Alleluia.!
TL:DR The Iron Law Of Oligarchy wins in the end.
What we are seeing now is the reversion to the mean.
The survey of journalism "leaders" favoring an end to newsroom objectivity shows the same lesson as your article about Georgia, where late-80s Soviet-bloc commies happily switched ideologies to maintain their political positions.
These people were never in it for the love of the news or whatever, they were in it to be big shots.
I think about this article, and then I think about what happened at Stanford Law a few weeks ago, and I can't help but conclude that the near future is going to get even uglier in the USA. Ideology uber alles.
And the upper middle class is so stupidly blinded by their hatred for Donald Trump that they're cheering it on
The upper-middle class are potentially problematic for the regime. Elite overproduction makes them replaceable. Their ranks need to be diversified. Their ability to provide leadership to lower or subaltern classes needs to be reduced. The agenda of diversity, gender fluidity and racial equality destabilises them and prevents their incorporation into the populist movement (MAGA).
The main rewarded talent in the upper-middle-class west for the last 40-60 years has been status-striving. The UMC will adopt the new status symbol even if it inflames hatred against...themselves. And their kids.
Trump is the greatest gift the PMC could ever ask for, maybe the greatest Emmanuel Goldstein ever.
For those of you who missed it yesterday - https://niccolo.substack.com/p/georgias-rose-revolution-2003
The attack on journalistic objectivity seems to be based on a twisted half truth. The 'objective' style of twentieth century official literature - not just journalism, but also especially scientific papers, think tank policy papers, etc. - demanded the stultifying 'voice from nowhere', in which all traces of authorial identify are stripped out, while the prose itself was rendered sterile and emotionless. The intent was to encourage an objective, analytical, just the facts mindset in both author and reader, but this has turned out to be a sham.
So, this new generation of journalists are rejecting this. Which isn't in and of itself a bad thing. But of course, they overcorrect - substituting 'lived experience' for an honest attempt to access the truth, and trying to cobble together their authorial voices from their intersectional identities. Ultimately it's a hamfisted misunderstanding.
Contrast that with the vitality of independent journalism. Reading you, or Taibbi, or Chris Bray, or eugyppius, just to give a few examples, there's no doubt that the words are coming from a specific person with a specific perspective on the world, who moreover is writing with a specific intellectual project in mind - not just to understand the world, but also to nudge it in a better direction. But because both hemispheres of your brains are functioning with some kind harmony, there's also the implicit understanding that there is actually a world to be understood, which can't be changed merely by manipulating symbols. Legacy media journalism school graduates don't seem to get this - they jump straight from 'an objective perspective is impossible' to 'objective reality doesn't really exist'. They're drunk on the insights of postmodernism, or maybe just too midwitted to grasp them.
Regarding the AI deep fake problem, yes in the short term this will be an issue. Long term, it will innoculate people to propaganda. When everything is suspect, nothing will be trusted, and the propagandists will find themselves pushing on a string.
This is an excellent, excellent post. Thank you.
Nice peasant music.
I think the attack on journalistic objectivity is more about about representativeness and the impossibility of perfect objectivity than tone. In both cases, the attack uses banal truisms as trojan horses to not just smuggle in but also to justify progressive bias.
Surely when talking about an LGBTQ issue, it is important to include an LGBTQ perspective. Talking to a coal miner is important when reporting on coal mining. Duh. And obviously perfect objectivity is impossible - this is some late night freshman weed induced philosophizing level of banal insight. Neither of these "insights" lead to the conclusion that media should abandon the pursuit of objectivity, but here we are.
I agree that the objective standard newsroom style leads to a false air of authority and objectivity. But stylistically I still prefer it to most independent reporter's writing. Most people including journalists simply aren't good writers and trying to write with an individual voice usually leads to worse writing than the standard AP style newsroom style writing. Journalists like Tom Wolf pulled it off because they were gifted writers. Taibbi and Greenwald for example are good journalists but mediocre writers. Their writing would benefit from an AP or NYT editor.
The internet age has led to the leveling of writing. Nearly everyone can write well enough to communicate, but there are very few gifted writers. The internet induced explosion of the written word has increased the value of writing for communication and devalued the artform of writing. It would be great if one of these exiled MSM journalist turned out to be a great writer, but I've not seen one yet.
A solid set of observations. Thank you.
I mostly agree with this, aside from the description of Taibbi as being a bad writer. 'A vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly shoving its blood funnel into anything that smells like money' is the kind of vivid, memorable, and accurate metaphor that only a good writer can develop.
As to the general quality of writing, yes, it's generally terrible. But how much of that is precisely because we're saturated with anonymous, officious prose that reads like it was composed by Commander Data?
I mostly agree with this, except for your embrace of "vivid... metaphor" and disdain(?) for "anonymous, officious prose." I much prefer SGT Joe Friday-style writing, leaving me to supply (type/degree of) metaphor if/where/when needed.
Griftopia is truly a great book, and the elites have it in for him ever since he lifted the veil. Brave man, and of course Frum that moral vacuum, is on the case now
But "surely when talking about an LGBTQ issue" - when what we're talking about is really a "TQ" issue, since that is where the problems arise - it is necessary to talk to the women, lesbians included, whose rights to single-sex spaces, sports, changing rooms, and more are disappearing. And to the parents who object to their children being taught the nonsensical "gender assigned at birth" denial of biological reality. But those viewpoints are silenced, declared "transphobic."
I think this is a fundamental problem with post modernism, and I'm increasingly convinced it's a desired outcome. Postmodernists, ironically, embraced Marxism so the notion of inspiring empathy and understanding between different groups (and ofcourse individuals) has been replaced with standpoint epistemology - the notion you must be this to understand that. It's tribal politics mixed with gnosticism, and as our man famously said "the worse, the better"
They are almost always seriously undereducated, rarely read anything written before 2010 unless it was on a compulsory reading list at college and they reduce postmodernism to poorly understood cliches. Also many journalists (especially in the prestige press) are legacy hires to begin with. The regime is not sending its best to the propaganda mills.
Far from not sending the best, the best are at each stage weeded out. They do not need our want intelligent, courageous, thoughtful, principled journalists. They want hacks that will do as they're told.
It's similar to the way some police departments reportedly have an upper limit for the acceptable IQ of recruits.
Very Zhaoian (point deer, make horse)
The finger that points to the deer is not the horse.
There are practical reasons for at least some of this. The wider culture has changed for the worse - difficult to control journalists would serve as a lightning rod for the regime's voluntary auxiliaries who enforce orthodoxies of all sorts. Companies that need to make a profit are not interested in the hassles.
The silver lining is that the regime-compliant institutions are hemorrhaging credibility and respect. The legacy media are now taken at face value only by the old or the loyalists.
They're essentially engaging in a form of shadowplay at this point - a vast game of make-believe where they and their cronies pretend that they're trusted sources and respected leaders, when the truth is that they're a running joke.
True but the play has a very serious dimension. It still manages to divert public attention. It also provides resources for regime supporters employed within it. The inanity of Clow World's self-understanding still confuses and disarms even very intelligent people. Meanwhile it is getting very serious. As the clowns caper, the thugs prepare their clubs and the gaolers their cells.
People who have lived through epoch-shaping events often recall episodes where they experienced a degree of unreality. IMO this is because there is a cognitive and emotional recalibration involved in which intuition prepares people for 'fight or flight' mode. We are certainly living through the first stages of something that is potentially pretty big.
Well said P. Compare it to the great songwriters from 60s I e. Dylan and Cohen, both Jews but with a vast hinterland in The Bible, New and Old Testaments, philosophy, poetry and prose of all ages, the time and place for analogy, simile, metaphor, satire....now they are mostly semi-literate goons. An English woman once asked me after listening to Dylan's Shelter From The Storm - she walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns - but why would anyone be wearing a crown made of thorns? Sigh. Point is the intellectual hinterland to compose that lyric. It was a given that Irish journalists had an intellectual hinterland also, beyond Super Mario, the simpler end of Marxism, rap, Marvel movies, and anything they can describe as dark and edgy.
You can't compare any cultural content today with what was produced by the last generation to be raised to adulthood before complete immersion in televisual entertainment became the norm. Reading copiously for pleasure and edification, supplemented with a schooling that emphasised parsing texts the old-fashioned way, is exceptionally rare.
It is a cultural break of unimaginable implications. The era that opened with Gutenberg (that made the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment possible) has ended. You can hear it in the way people speak. Vocabularies today are not as rich, sentences are not as well-structured and litererary allusions are getting rarer. The dumbing down demoralises me endlessly.
Televisual culture is wonderful but we need to develop a culture than constrains and disciplines its use.
Hey John!
When I see the Junior Jacobins of the Soc Justice religion, I think they may be "drunk on the insights of postmodernism" (esp when it's boiled down to: any stifling of my desires is political oppression) but they're also drunk on the desperate need to inflict their "moral clarity" on us, meaning more or less life is not worth living to them if they can't attempt to personally destroy people through their favorite attack technique, the Bigotry Accusation.
For this generation of virtual zealots the Bigotry Accusation is what Elvis and hula hoops were to the 50s or what disco and polyester were to the 70s: all the cool kids are doing it and it feels too good to not get in on the party. Everything runs downstream from the desire to attack and destroy your perceived enemies.
Also, objectivity for a journalist is like mastery of your instrument to a musician or practiced meditation/prayer for a monk or priest, it requires years of dedication to a craft, which often must come before the self and its immediate needs.
But mastery, restraint, control and excellence are evil impositions of the white man, thus they will also need to be thrown onto the pyre.
Strongly agree on the long term effects of AI. It's a genie that won't be easy to put back in the bottle. The rollout will be used for unimaginable levels of propaganda but it won't take much for that to quickly turn around. However, we may be left with a population that rejects the propaganda but also has nothing to really believe in. Maybe that's harmless in the end or maybe that allows levels of tyranny we can't imagine
Possibly "parallel realities"? I need to think about this.
I'm sure it is more widespread than in my Irish homeland but up to 30 years ago, journalists very often did not have university degrees, but started at 17 or 18 straight from an excellent honours Leaving Cert (think Baccalaureate) and started with a regional newspaper. There they reported on the most local and banal of politics, sports, local news, local courts, where they met all classes and experienced human life in all its messiness and complexity. They were rigourously edited and if proficient, given more responsibility. After some time, they might apply for a job on a national publication. It was a real craft. Now it is people of the same haute bourgeoisie class who get a uni "degree" in "journalism". Just a bunch of clones involved in a pedantic, semi-literate groupthink. Wankers all, graduates of a course provided by failed leftist politicians and otherwise unemployable alcoholics. True cosmopolitans, loving every country except their own.
The replacement of lived apprenticeships with canned, theory-laden academic credentials has been a disaster everywhere it's been applied
I am sure you have seen those videos of maybe 50 newscasters mouthing the exact same words. I am sure you know that the mainstream media is controlled by the oligarchs (6, I believe) who own them and that the CIA supplies the content. That they are propaganda, mind control for the masses, surely, you know that. So, what is this talk about "post-objectivism"?
Fair point, although I do want to say that we were once able to rely a lot on the news wires like AFP, Reuters, and AP. But that's done now too.
Mind control for the dwindling masses who still trust mass media.
Echo chambers for those who still follow team sports.
The biggest block of voters these days call themselves independent.
Those people are politically homeless and the ministry of truth is scrambling how to influence them. They keep striking out, so they end up bunting and not getting far, or getting tagged out at first base.
I was sad to see Twitter blocking Substack, but if the end result is getting to see you shitpost in MattY’s feed, it will have been worth it.
I will keep doing it.
Not sure what to make of that “leak” about the Ukraine conflict. Obviously spooked up. One interesting thing I did see from western intelligence is the strategic depth of Russian forces. It indicated they’re woefully undermanned along huge geographic areas. This actually rang true. They’re big problems in this war are lack of commitment and unwillingness to shake up their gerontocratic military command. The parts of their system that have performed well are their economic ministers and Wagner which runs itself like a corporation where there is a clear command structure and accountability. The head of Wagner has sounded alarm bells about a counteroffensive, I could very well see that succeeding just due to the structure of the Russian military in that nobody will step and risk accountability to say “hey somebody fucked up here, we don’t actually have enough troops near x”
Early on in the war when Zelensky was vacillating between spewing propaganda and telling actual truths, he let out something interesting and I think, poignant: he said that even if they expel all Russian forces from Ukraine, the Russians will just keep coming back.
Yes at the current state it’s slated really to be a bogged down mess for an indefinite period. The Russians aren’t competent or assertive enough to actually take enough territory to form a victory but are competent enough in other parts of their system where they’re not going to collapse. The US under its current admin also isn’t going to negotiate or cease aid
Idea: what if the Russians are happy with grinding the Ukes down along the present front lines instead of attempting big advances that would leave their forces exposed?
Given the current state of things you’re very correct. But does the fact that the realistic analysis a year in is “an attempt to actually win this war against a much smaller nation has a high chance of ending in devastating failure given our current force levels” beg the question why they are in that situation
Definitely.
Interesting that Prigozhin admits lately that Wagner operates under Surovikin overall command.
Undermanned? Not for the task of stopping the Ukrainian attack on Donetsk and Lugansk that commenced in February 2022. Moscow expected Ukraine to act rationally and negotiate...which Kiev initially did before the assassination of the Ukrainian diplomat involved in the talks at Gomel (killed by Ukrainians curiously enough) and Boris Johnson's sabotage of the peace deal in Istanbul. It was not until after that the Russians began putting together a much larger army.
Prigozhin's comments on the Ukrainian counteroffensive may (or may not) be intended to muddy the waters. I doubt that the Stavka (Russian General Staff) makes strategic decisions on the bases of public deliberations/advice. So far the Russians appear to be winning, but I am not following things that closely and am not any kind of expert.
Collapse is necessary to wipe out the malinvestments, the best part is it will wipe out all those who benefitted by this unjust economy. I had the thought they will limit anyone to 250,000, but I don't think that will be acceptable to those with more. Ha! For the record, a couple thousand a month or so is nice money I know. But starting over from scratch even that won't be needed as there will not be much to buy.
I think a civil war would be over very quickly as it'll be those who own guns wiping out all those who don't believe in owning guns. I think taking away hunting rights would start it in a day.
"Newly minted millionaire" will mean billionaires who lost their fortunes.
Wiping out fortunes will be meaningless if the structures that enabled them still stand. Wall Street is plagued by financial parasites who use numerous schemes to strip companies of their value to line their pockets while producing nothing. Serious financial market reforms are overdue.
Anyway, buy, hodl, DRS.
I no longer buy any financial investments. Because you are right.
Withdraw cash in innocuous amounts if possible and keep well hidden. It will really be king.
I don't know, I suspect they will call it in. it would have to be accepted in the free market and why would anyone accept Federal Reserve notes?.
On Russia:
This all seems to me to be prototypical Russian military strategy. Dick around for a while playing with your food before eventually going all in. Finland seemed like they were doing pretty well in their conflict with the Red Army in 1939. Not so much 1940. That was obviously a much shorter conflict, but the spirit is there! 😄 Russia wins wars by brute survival and eventual overwhelming force. I see no reason to assume they can’t do that now, inasmuch as I’m able to believe anything I read about it outside this Substack.
On journalism:
Best to simply use my own eyes and my own brain. My own personal list of trusted news sources has been reduced to two and if they’re not talking about something, I don’t need to know about something. I’ll hear the air raid sirens no matter how much kvetching I engage in trying to divine their reasons prior to them going off. I don’t know if this strategy is brilliant or cowardly, but I do know that it’s about all I can handle.
The changes to news, media, and information have the overall effect of adding an additional layer of complexity to our lives.
Hence you being one of my two trusted sources. Thank you in advance for all of your hard work, and I mean that sincerely!
I thank our host for generously talking about my thoughts! I only add that I have a companion piece that talks further about my claims of Regime fragility: https://theworthyhouse.com/2022/10/31/on-the-fragility-of-the-current-regime/
word up
I note that just this morning, it appears that the leaks are wider spread, which would argue against them being deliberate Regime disinformation, I think:
https://archive.is/vNqS2
I will take a look. Merci.
From William Tell to Emmett Till to the Til Eulenspiegel Society, in only a few hundred years, is noteworthy; but Brawndo to Branko in only a dozen paragraphs is hats-off respectable. (kudos for the link to "hyperfeminiztion") PS: In Hebrew, "Emmett" (אמת) means "Truth". I don't think it was invited to (or present for) the Congressional discussions.
:) Give Branko a listen and lemme know what you think.
Lavrov looks like Milton Berle
*insert Milton Berle legend about his member joke here*