June 2019 – Batfort

Life, I have discovered, is more like a tango than a sprint. Two steps forward, one step back. Toe-heel, toe-heel, turn in a circle. Something something rose in your mouth. Every time I get confident in how far I’ve come, I’ll lose some of what I’ve gained. Sometimes it’s just a little stumble. Other times, I find myself back at the bottom of the hill, dizzy from all the somersaults.

I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. The only solution is to get back up and try again. Trajectory is what matters, more than any one data point.

Now, in completely totally utterly unrelated news, let’s go to the links so I can clear off the 2948723987423 tabs that are open in my browser.

» Overcoming the “One More Year” Syndrome

» After reading this you’ll never want to eat GMO food again (Yep…he’s right)

But of course nobody really knows what the long-term health effects will be once humans start eating “synthetic proteins” on a massive scale.

And once these gene-edited organisms start spreading their genetic material in the wild, it could be a complete and total environmental nightmare. According to Rebecca Burgess, these food companies are “not considering the future of genetic pollution”…

» Winning the Information War

» After Academia

Peter Thiel has given a uniquely scathing critique of the insanity of this system. He questions whether higher education, as an economic exchange, represents much of an investment anymore—the student defers gratification to reap higher rewards in the future, or the student enjoys a four-year party as a consumption good. Thiel says he originally thought of higher education as consumption masquerading as investment, but now thinks of it as an even crazier combination of concepts: as insurance against failure in life in general, and as a kind of Veblen good that is priced uncompetitively so as to confer status on those who can afford it. This produces a ridiculous situation in which insurance is desirable, not because something disastrous is prudently insured against, but because the disaster would be the ignominy of failing to purchase insurance in the first place. It is effectively a Ponzi scheme. No wonder Thiel calls college administrators subprime mortgage brokers. They get a cut on selling pieces of paper that are only as valuable as we all pretend they are.

» 5-HTTLPR: A POINTED REVIEW [Disclaimer: I haven’t read the whole article yet]

» Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, and that’s great

» Peter Thiel Against Consensus Reality [Yup, Peter Thiel again]

» The Wisdom of Spotted Toad

» Second-order effects

» Bret Easton Ellis Nails Contemporary America

Unspoken but evident in these condemnations is Ellis’s most serious crime: He was seen as a man of the left, but is now somehow a convert despite essentially being the same person. American Psycho was controversial when it was published in 1991, and remains so today, but was and is largely seen as a criticism of the Reagan-era capitalist resurgence, and thus, of use to the Left. Turning the same unforgiving pen against today’s obsession with identity and victimhood is rather less helpful to progressives.

Despite not being primarily about politics—White is fundamentally a critique of recent art and culture—the book manages to capture something fundamental about Donald Trump that neither his detractors nor supporters appreciate. Ellis didn’t vote for Trump (or Hillary), isn’t a fanboy, and positioned Trump as Patrick Bateman’s false idol in American Psycho. But Ellis grasps that Trump’s biggest impact is as much cultural as it is political: “The building that had been inhabited by liberal identity-obsessed elitists was now, after eight years of an Obama hep-cat style and sensibility, being deconstructed—in fact, decimated—by disruptors who’d taken over and were playing by an entirely new set of rules. Not only that, but these disruptors were telling those confused by these new rules to go fuck themselves…”

» Borrowed vs Owned Power

» No idea of this is legit or not, but apparently you can hide from AI with digital camo?

» Church podcast: Defecting from Bethel [Disclaimer 2: Also haven’t listened to this one, although I’ve seen some of her Facebook posts]

» Homeschooled children are far more socially engaged than you might think

» Cerno podcast: The 3-5 book rule and how to master life

» Why are Silicon Valley billionaires starving themselves?

» Carrie Grant: Childbirth is nothing compared to the agony of Crohn’s disease

» The Architecture of Self-Hatred

» More corporate grubbing around in legislation. Gross.

» Basics of Traditional Chinese Medicine