phf: i think main value of business account with us telco, they actually show you how short the leash is. instead of "unlimited everything!!1" you get an equivalent of 90s dialup, but you're free to use it at saturation levels

phf: ascii_field: what does netcat with tcpdump say? do packets just get blackholed?

phf: they got capone on tax evasion

phf: i don't know anything about mafioso in america beyond disnified, "you gonna like this guy, he's all right, he's a good fella", so i would believe about capone. but then he was a brooklyn hood rad, where's tito was a man

phf: !up ascii_field

phf: what i was trying to say re capone vs tito, is that capone was a hood rat, with the operational scope of village vs village, for him fbi involvement was perhaps the leviathan. where's tito was successful tactician and strategist in war and later a national leader. i suspect that allowed him to operate on the sufficiently high level to resist governmental intervention on equal terms

phf: !up thestringpuller

phf: ascii_field: the way i see mp's point is that tito, capone and random schmuck all have same options. random schmuck is that way for never acting on those options. capone is a schmuck for only sometimes not acting on his options. etc.

phf: ag3nt_zer0: i couldn't get past his west vs. east chapter, or slightly after. his understanding of eastern tradition is dodgy (i see same issue with evola by the way), since he exists in the time after theosophists's liberal translations of sacred texts, but before people like mircea eliade or theos bernard had a chance to verify with the locals whether or the understanding was correct. (and long before easterners themselves started making

phf: scholarly rather then popular translations).

phf: ag3nt_zer0: theosophy does completely fanciful free interpretation based on amateur translations by various aristocrats gone native. any sane person will look at it and go "wtf" upon closer inspection, but you're still left with amateur translations. not to mention that you need representatives of traditions to interpret those esoteric texts (what i mean by locals)

phf: guenon's revelations are entirely his own, inspired perhaps by close reading of some of the available eastern sacred texts

phf: theosophy did one good thing, their "members" would do early translations of various sacred texts, and they would make those translations available through their lodges

phf: the translations are universally bad, but gave westerners first glimpses of "eastern thought"

phf: as far as ultimate knowledge, different schools have contradictory answers to some of those fundamental questions (say samkhya vs advaita vedanta's take on self vs absolute)

phf: the assumption that there's any kind of unity to eastern sacred thought is by the way theosophical in nature, where's you have a bajilion of lineages all with their own takes on what's true

phf: another point i'll make before checking in for the night, is that eastern mystical tradition is experiential, a lot of ideas of the nature of ultimate reality and such are not even worth contemplating until you go through whatever the lineage prescribes, meditation, purification practices, breathing exercises, physical exercises, that are supposed to bring you towards understanding of ultimate reality. talking about it or presenting second

phf: hand revelations as some sort of ultimate truth completely contradicts the original intent.