TechTakes

There is quite a contrast between the call for conscription (6.), the whining that civil servants have too much pay and respect (8.) and the praise for public life (9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service.) I think he means that earning a living wage for getting up every morning rain or shine and delivering an old man's bank statements is BAD, but if you accept a modest position as Chief Technology Officer or Cabinet Secretary nobody should be allowed to criticize you.

The notorious socialists at the (checks notes) World Economic Forum rank social mobility in the USA as 27th in the world behind Sweden, Germany, Canada, and Japan (!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States So this seems like another demonstration that being very rich is like being kicked in the head by a horse or drinking a bottle of wine a day.

Okay much as I'm angry and want to I'm resisting the urge to go point-by-point until I have more time. But I also want to point out that in form it seems like The Beigeness has really caught on as a writing style. Like, we have 22(!) individual points, each of which gestures vaguely at the kind of militant interventionist white nationalist technocracy that could conceivably power the unholy chimera of a silicon valley tech giant and a murderous beltway defense contractor. But unless the book does so more openly, they avoid clearly stating the actual thesis. It's not really surprising, just interesting to note the pattern spreading from Rat spaces into the broader right wing.

Good link, thanks.

The commenter totally missed what a shock the executions of Charles I and Louis XVI were. The natural reaction to "if the king is bad just kill him" is for the king to more or less aggressively remove threats to their persons.

Love a good no true Scotsman in the title.

Unrelated: apparently our king/queen (no idea which one specifically was to blame) is why .nl doesnt celebrate 1 may.

"It's only monarchy if it's got a Habsburg jaw, otherwise it's just sparkling tyranny."

On one hand, I appreciate their acknowledgement that legitimacy matters to a government's ability to govern. While the talk about the king as a figure tied to a broader structure that creates obligations and requirements just as strongly as it does power and privilege isn't entirely historically accurate it's at least less absurd than Yarvin's notion of the dictator as a kind of unmoved mover - someone with both absolute power and absolute discretion to do what they want with it.

At the same time, if you follow that chain of thought to it's actual conclusions you end up with some kind of radical democracy. Like, legitimacy is just a way to ask the question of why anyone should bother to do what the guy calling himself king says. Historically speaking this often boils down to trying to judge how credible the threat of violence is should you refuse. If the king isn't going to be around in a week due to an ongoing succession crisis then there's no point in getting ready to pay his taxes next month, essentially. But if we reframe the question another answer becomes available: why should people consent to be governed? And the democratic answer is that the government represents their interests and is trying to organize and take actions they support. Government by consent of the governed is a descriptive statement about how governments operate, not a normative one about how they should. Once you account for the extra costs and consequences of needing to manufacture consent through violence and repression the supposed efficiency of dictatorship evaporates.

If all you have is a blog, it's natural for you to think that you can effect regime change through blogging.

But there's a very large step between

1. blog a lot
2. ???
3. absolute CEO-king

Culture matters. The US has had a de jure republic for almost 250 years. Even though the presidency has steadily moved to a more central role, it's one thing to have a literal KING in place. There needs to be a story there, and saying "we need to be more effective or the Chinese will win" doesn't really cut it.

It took France almost 100 years to finally establish republican rule: revolution, Directory, First Empire, Bourbon Restoration, Orleanist monarchy, Second Republic, coup, Second Empire, catastrophic military defeat, Third Republic.

Then we get narrow Pyhrric victory in WW1, defeat again, collaborationist dictatorship, 4th republic, de Gaulle gets fed up, 5th republic.

Even today the French president has more power than in many other republican constitutions.

How does Yarvin propose to remove the republican idea from American consciousness?

Unless he specifies his problem was with ostensibly leftist academics being specifically too dismissive of race science and incelist tropes this is worthless, just run of the mill face-leopard schadenfreude.

Also the second half (the what? what's the cut-off point?) of his career has been if anything more mask off, and it's not like he stopped whining about woke after posting a half-hearted disapproval of trump like three days before the election after years of writing about how cool it would be if there was less regulation especially for healthcare.

I spent the first half of my writing career calling out biased left-wing experts,

He admits it!

refreshing to see people tale actual deep dives and explain in detail why Mythos is nonsense

The MCP thing feels like an I like to leave my keys as a huge bulge under the welcome mat type vulnerability. It seems really easy to not do that and also something that is kind of out of scope for both lock makers and mat salesmen to address directly.

Maybe the MCP ecosystem is such that it's hard to both avoid this and keep the impression that you're doing magic and not just implementing a heavily annotated API, hopefully secured and with specific and well-defined functionality, and also they are all hacks.

in a world of draftkings and polymarket, this almost feels quaint. the stock-based gambling houses are losing to the prediction markets and sportsbooks and they're flailing around trying to catch up. I wish them all the worst

just one more data trove bro

Are new data-hungry players entering the market of are we still pretending that shoveling more social media posts to the data furnace will somehow overcome structural limitations?