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mircea_popescu: As late as the autumn of 1945, a Gallup poll taken among the American troops in Germany showed that 51 percent "thought Hitler did much good before 1939". This was after five years of anti-Hitler propaganda.
mircea_popescu: "Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved reputation by dying prematurely."
mircea_popescu: ahaha hey... that'd be pretty epic. have TWO pcs on that thing.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform mind that these anecdotes in no way diminish the book
mircea_popescu: so today. with the reddit of out of work waitresses and musicants
mircea_popescu: strial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom."
mircea_popescu: ame of "managers". These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organise society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new "managerial" societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main indu
mircea_popescu: "Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the n
mircea_popescu: i am known for my kindly, generous, charitable disposition
mircea_popescu: phf so you're not getting eulora mushrooms because you're writing bitcoin in lisp ?
mircea_popescu: t the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?"
mircea_popescu: "It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the NEWS OF THE WORLD. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in jus
mircea_popescu: passion's as good as whoever puts it forth, which means that with most people it has the consistency of puss and the aroma of old faces.
mircea_popescu: and so they imagined it's a panacea. which it definitely is not.
mircea_popescu: except it turns out that passion only seemed valuable because so rarely encountered from the sort of women these people hung out with (ie, carefully not whores)
mircea_popescu: "the editors" organized "on the other hand a good deal of reviewing, especially of novels, might well be done by amateurs. Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a passionate dislike, in some or other reader, whose ideas about it would surely be worth more than those of a bored professional"
mircea_popescu: a bored professional. But, unfortunately, as every editor knows, that kind of thing is very difficult to organise. In practice the editor always finds himself reverting to his team of hacks–his "regulars", as he calls them."
mircea_popescu: the solution lies in getting book reviewing out of the hands of hacks. Books on specialised subjects ought to be dealt with by experts, and on the other hand a good deal of reviewing, especially of novels, might well be done by amateurs. Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a passionate dislike, in some or other reader, whose ideas about it would surely be worth more than those of
mircea_popescu: "The great majority of reviews give an inadequate or misleading account of the book that is dealt with. Since the war publishers have been less able than before to twist the tails of literary editors and evoke a paean of praise for every book that they produce, but on the other hand the standard of reviewing has gone down owing to lack of space and other inconveniences. Seeing the results, people sometimes suggest that
mircea_popescu: (commie romania had weirdo "to buy x you must also buy y" quota system to prop up the central economy. that particular book was outrageous in a country nobodyu owned as much as a raft, let alone yachts. so it became symbolic)
mircea_popescu: ascii_field i think they give books more in line with "tehnologia navigatiei cu vele"
mircea_popescu: they couldn't get into the highschools, so prepuberty is the last time we met at the table.
mircea_popescu: the last time i encountered humans that balked for hours at reading "at least 50 pages" i was in jr high and the humans in question where the losers in the class.
mircea_popescu: then do the math on what 1-2k lines of daily log mean, in words.
mircea_popescu: read the piece, tell me anything but skim is contemplated.
mircea_popescu: i read a million words a day, and have been reading a million words a day each day for years straight.
mircea_popescu: "Three of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least 50 pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author (who of course knows all about the habits of book reviewers), but even to the general reader. "
mircea_popescu: (and besides, you said yourself : go, not "are lent to")
mircea_popescu: if i ever want to buy a bible, i do not wish to buy a soggy dog eared piece of composted toilet paper ensmeared with the biological refuse of five generations of idiots of the sort that'd misread a bible.
mircea_popescu: ly buying, directly or indirectly, about three books a year. These three books taken together might cost £1, or probably less."
mircea_popescu: "Meanwhile, what is the actual amount that the British public spends on books? I cannot discover any figures, though no doubt they exist. But I do know that before the war this country was publishing annually about 15,000 books, which included reprints and school books. If as many as 10,000 copies of each book were sold–and even allowing for the school books, this is probably a high estimate-the average person was on
mircea_popescu: and the mass of people take an interest once the poor activity becomes the cheapest in a class.
mircea_popescu: no human activity ever survived and very few have recovered from the mass of people taking an interest.
mircea_popescu: "I have said enough to show that reading is one of the cheaper recreations: after listening to the radio probably THE cheapest."
mircea_popescu: i don't think i smoked enough to pay for a decent book in those tobacco prices.
mircea_popescu: making nearly £40 a year. Even before the war when the same tobacco cost 8d. an ounce, I was spending over £10 a year on it"
mircea_popescu: "Twenty-five pounds a year sounds quite a lot until you begin to measure it against other kinds of expenditure. It is nearly 9s. 9d. a week, and at present 9s. 9d. is the equivalent of about 83 cigarettes (Players): even before the war it would have bought you less than 200 cigarettes. With prices as they now are, I am spending far more on tobacco than I do on books. I smoke six ounces a week, at half-a-crown an ounce,
mircea_popescu: anyway, the "biblioteca de arta" collection was easily 500 volumes. it mostly dealt with cultural anthropology, aesthetics and such. tiny fraction of a fucking library seriously
mircea_popescu: oddly enough, more interested in the books than in the girls, coupla decades later.
mircea_popescu sadly never thought to take pictures of the thing itself, all he has is various nude girlies in front of bookwalls.
mircea_popescu: twelve and sixpence is about 20 dollars in today's money.
mircea_popescu: quote : "You don't suppose we read that stuff, do you? Why, half the time you're talking about books that cost twelve and sixpence!"
mircea_popescu: i owned > 10k volumes before getting rid of the lot, as a 20yo man.
mircea_popescu: l text-books and so forth–that accumulate in the bottoms of cupboards. I have counted only those books which I have acquired voluntarily, or else would have acquired voluntarily, and which I intend to keep. In this category I find that I have 442 books, acquired in the following ways:
mircea_popescu: The books that I have counted and priced are the ones I have here, in my flat. I have about an equal number stored in another place, so that I shall double the final figure in order to arrive at the complete amount. I have not counted oddments such as proof copies, defaced volumes, cheap paper-covered editions, pamphlets, or magazines, unless bound up into book form. Nor have I counted the kind of junky books-old schoo