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Thoughts about our non-upcoming domestic civil war
At one of the earlier meetups the topic arose of the remote possibility of a domestic civil war caused by Social Media divisions – my thoughts on the matter are:
- Social media is really the world’s loudest tranquilizer – people take to FB/Twitter/Reddit/Chans as a substitute to doing something
- The rare people who have the opposite reaction (spurred to action) are loud, terrible and tragic, but by and large the harms of social media are confined to the consumer. On net social media is an activity reducer on par with marijuana or opiates
- Should there be a civil war I think we would find that the split would be 1% Antifa/1% Alt-Right (or whatever they’re called now) 98% people who would not pick a side, but would support whatever harsh measures needed to suppress the two percent. I think the 1980s are a useful example in that regard.
- At this point I don’t think gun ownership is a useful metric of progressiveness – i.e. my immediate neighborhood is both very woke and pretty well armed – I think we would find gun ownership is much more distributed than one might think.
My original thought behind writing this post was that ideological compatibility between one side and law enforcement/military was irrelevant, since both of those professions select highly for following orders much more so than discretion. Now that I write it all out I think that is a moot point.
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How to validate startup ideas
Thank of a positive mention on the stratechery blog, exactly how would they describe your company? Answers to come soon for my three ideas in development.
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Daisy Two
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Introducing Daisy
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The relativity of wrong
A perfect essay by Asimov on the right way to view the world
Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the “curvature” of the earth’s surface Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn’t deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile.
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn’t. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That’s why the theory lasted so long.
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Overheard at drop-off
At the sight of kids holding up signs advertising their pancake breakfast fundraiser at the school.
Marleigh:
Daddy – don’t worry – they might look like homeless people but they’re actually just fifth-graders with signs
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Tankies sacrifice Jeffrey Epstein to the Aztec Sun God and unleash weaponized feminism – the 13th SSC Atlanta meetup
We had our monthly SSC Atlanta at the usual spot – topics included
- Tankies – evidently there are enough modern day defenders of Stalin/Lenin/Bolshevism to merit their own derogatory nickname
- Jeffrey Epstein – and the many, many conspiracy theories surrounding his demise
- Reasonable seeming things at the time and place (i.e. the religion of the Aztecs)
Many more things were discussed – but I lost my notes and I can’t recall them specifically right now.