asciilifeform: well, herr newton, etc. rising up from the ranks
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: problem still remains, that merit isn't a thing << now i'm curious
asciilifeform: and there'll be plenty of folks ready to help
asciilifeform: when things get wedged at 'of birth' that's really an invitation for a napoleon to come and, technical term, 'fuck shit up just because'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: napoleon's "general's baton" << i always understood that piece to speak of his favour for aristocracy 'of merit' vs of birth
asciilifeform: benevolence of the european man, and his general humanity << the funny part is that the russian left (pro-american. if you want to actually understand post-collapse ussr, gotta understand why left->pro-us) went right back to this spiel
asciilifeform: mr mold likes to crank it all the way back to... voltaire
asciilifeform: much as it must've sucked to be on the receiving end of the beast - much of what people like to gripe about re: soviet ham-handedness was, as you might say, 'forced mistake.'
asciilifeform: from edward limonov, 'disciplinary sanitarium.'
asciilifeform: of course, unphased by this. We know now that their strategy of psychological war turned out to be a correct one... To establish the injustice, the 'meanness' of the enemy in a moralistic war is every bit as important as winning a pitched battle in a hot war.'☟︎
asciilifeform: moral justice the legions ought to forsake the lands for which they had paid with their blood. Not only is the transference of conceptions of morality to the evaluation of historical events a phony method, but, if we recall, the moralists - the defeated European nations and the Americans, enemies of the USSR - that is to say, non-impartial moralists - their condemnations sound hollow indeed. The offenders, are,☟︎
asciilifeform: 'the Western blok... preferred to view the Eastern European nations as victims of Soviet aggression, ignoring the simple and manly fact (that would have been instantly understood by a Roman) that Soviet legions, without anyone's help, took possession of Eastern Europe via force of arms, answering aggression with aggression. And the Roman would an absurdity - he could not comprehend, in the name of what so-called☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: try this one on for size:
asciilifeform: (famous letter from tito to stalin, found on the latter's desk after his death)
asciilifeform: 'Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.'
asciilifeform reports from the unintended-side-effects-of-new-tech-department: put on new set of noise-cancellers, can now hear my tongue move. disturbing.
asciilifeform: moiety: 2nd lynx was found in the wild as a kitten (hunters killed its mother)
asciilifeform: moiety: 1st link - also siberian lynx. in moscow apartment.
asciilifeform noticed first 'in anger' test of stabilizer - mains went out for ~1s, ups (upstream of stab) didn't even notice. plenty of joules in the xformer's magnetic field...
asciilifeform: naggum's best work, unfortunately (or...) is unpublished - still likely grinding away at - oil refineries, weather bureaus, dark halls of norwegian finance, etc...
asciilifeform: can't help but suspect that he'dve turned up here if he still walked.
asciilifeform never once spoke to naggum, can't freud him
asciilifeform: but hell only knows, he had other reasons to waste away than the idiots and their blather. dumped his girl shortly before found dead, too (her blog is linked somewhere in there)
