redcairo

"The goal of socialism is communism." -- Lenin

Sure. It's an environmental thing. A large amount of genetic response is gene expression, not just hard coded DNA. We "adapt" even within a couple generations to a lot of environmental things. I'm not referring to long-term "evolutionary" changes obviously. It is a known that the more threatening the environment, generally the more children people seem to have (if allowed). A survival instinct to make sure at least some make it far enough alive to reproduce. And even on a small individual scale you see this in soldiers who often suddenly are driven to breed (not just have sex) after hitting combat experience. Threat to survival = urge to replicate. Immigrants don't come from our culture. They come from their own cultures and environmental situations. Most of which suck given since '65 we've been importing from pitiful-situations out of mercy far more than any other reason. Then add tens of millions of illegal aliens. This plus religion (held differently most the time, again a result of culture) drives enormous birth rates. On the whole, US citizens have a declining birth rate and the higher the economic class the moreso. They don't feel threatened. And their culture is also geared to people not wanting to spend their life on a hamster wheel starving with the kid -- they want to work out schooling, and often some career, prior to settling down and having kids. Unfortunately we also have a nutritional armageddon the last few decades that is resulting in a staggering quantity of disease to include a variety of things that lead to unofficial infertility. (Meaning there's not "official reason" why a woman doesn't get pregnant, she just doesn't.) Plus a culture that tells women it doesn't matter you can always do it later, when in fact fertility is higher in the younger and health is better, usually for the baby as well. So I'd say that sure, our culture is at least a much a part of that declining birth rate as anything. But I think the lack of sense of threat is related. Because it naturally results in lower birth rates. And the lack of threat is in part because it's getting easier. We don't often die young except by accident (though disease rates are growing for every segment of population). We don't die of most the contagious illnesses. Even most forms of poisoning and injury if not immediately fatal are curable because of the tech speed at which we can reach, transport, and treat people. There isn't the same sense of driving-need. So that reduces birth rate naturally, which is an environmental adaptation of the population to the situation. Automation increasing (I mean, it's already present in everything, just not "fully") is what I hooked it to, not because "our bodies are saying hey AI is coming, adapt!" LOL, but because the state of our technology is what has so vastly improved our survival environment in every way. I probably could have said that better or differently in the first place. RC

Yeah, everyone is Q. :-) Doesn't really matter. Even if it were a LARP by a smart hacker with some kind of 'in' to original photos, the message of it overall is still good (unity, patriotism), and watching the wheel roll on, trying to figure stuff out, seeing what comes to pass (many things so far), and a completely different "perspective," has been entertaining and worthy on its own merits. Honestly politics is horrifically depressing, so what the left gets out every-single-major-media-outlet, the right gets out of Q Anon: Hope. RC

Yes, gender dysphoria is a real (and tragic) condition. But it IS a condition. Taking female hormones that make a man weaker is not the same as being a woman. So maybe your strength is equal. But everything else including the way muscles connect in some areas, including 'reach' which is a huge issue in fighting, have not changed. The very definition of what the far-left (to including third-wave feminism, or pussyists as I call them -- their obsession with the term, not mine) is doing, aside from creating chaos in every possibly imaginable way, is to insist on all of society 'suffering for the sake of the minority' -- even if the minority is point-zero-something % of the population. It is one thing to make allowances but even then, that happens for minorities of a dramatically larger quantity, such as 'disabled' across the board. It is another thing to actually do harm in one way or another to the vast-vast-majority. Right now, the issue there is that trans women who are biologically men (except in the brain apparently) are, even with 'female hormones making them weaker,' simply superior in sport to actual biological women -- there are too few trans, and too many trans winning the very top of women's sports, to ignore this. Imagine the women who have dedicated their life, years, all their money, and more to pursuit of something, only to reach near the top -- and lose utterly to one more men who decided they were women and sports leagues are F'ing insane enough to go, "Oh, ok then!" instead of "Yeah, so compete against the men -- or, start a league for trans." The sheer unfairness and injustice of it is staggering. And to anyone who says, "Oh but poor trans! They can't help feeling like a woman!" -- sure, I sympathize, I wish them the happiest life, but why should A TON OF PEOPLE be punished so 0.03% or whatever "get to play" in a given league even though they aren't properly qualified? Short people and women don't get to play NBA, people with any kind of physical/mental disease are usually precluded from a lot of stuff the 'normal' population does, so cry me a river, what makes trans so special beyond every other kind of human on earth, including those with disabilities and dysfunctions -- which gender dysphoria IS -- in far greater numbers than them? So consider the trans in sports sitch we have right now. And then consider how many lawsuits have succeeded in forcing the "qualifying merits" down down down even in life and death situations -- for soldiers, for police officers -- so women could get in "equally" (rather than just occasionally when exceptional), and then so race-X could get in "more equally" and so on. It is only a matter of time until this same logic leads to that orwellian-situation (forget the author's name) where, in order to make "society equal," people had to wear all kinds of interfering things -- chains for the strong, mental-interruptors for the smart, etc. This pathological obsession with "equality of outcome" is an actual mental problem, and while people are welcome to have all the mental problems they want on their own time watching it mess up our country in so many ways is nauseating. RC

I am gradually starting to believe that our species actually has a need, a genuine NEED in capitals, for what amounts to a 'coming of age trials'. Which should happen when they come of age in biological maturity -- that would be like 14, not 18. I think the artificial extension of helpless childhood creates uncountable problems. And I think the lack of opportunity to "become an adult" when people need to, biologically, wreaks havoc with us individually to varying degrees and culturally to a massive degree, becoming more apparent all the time. Sure we can say, 14 year olds are lunatics, idiots, and lucky to make it across the street alive. But a/ it has always been thus, and b/ that does not prevent their biology from developing as it will, and this has a lot of psychological effects, then and later. I think a lot of the piercing etc. behavior is in part for a need to be challenged, be strong, that sort of thing. I think a lot of young teen behavior, from hating their parents very suddenly for no apparent reason, to gang behavior, is (aside from environments that might make either of those reasonable) acting-out because they haven't been ALLOWED to be forced into independence and forced to meet a hard challenge and know they best it.[1] I think a lot of un-self-correcting rage in the universities, is for the same reason in part. Sure other things add to it majorly, like media and marxist entrainment in schooling. But I think fundamentally it is because people reach adulthood around 14, and they are still, now at 19-23, in a forcibly-child environment, and more they are "taken care of" the more this is so (which may be why you see more of this crap at ivy leagues and with scholarships/grants/loans, than at schools where students maybe had to work in high school and probably have to work during college as well). [1] There is a book by Joseph Chilton Pearce called "Evolution's End." I read this about six months after I gave birth, and wept for not having read it soon enough to do me more good during that. Anyway, the book is really about two things: the research done on biology, maternity, childbirth, earliest childhood, and the biological impact of different experiences on baby AND mother; and then, how those things impact our culture, and possibly the future of our species, how it affects the babies growing up, things like that. I saw everybody differently for a while after reading that book. Well, one of the interesting things was that I had no idea that certain elements during the overall childbirth process would actually have impacts not just on the baby but on the mother too, which in turn can affect the baby. I didn't realize that there are certain things that actually NEED to happen (e.g. caesarean has different effects than vaginal canal for birth) for the development of the child and in fact, that nature via evolution has apparently hardwired into us. Later, reading some other books including one by a man from a tribal culture that at least when he was younger, still had a "rites of passage" thing, I suddenly realized: This is probably not limited to childbirth. Humanity has expected adults to be adults when they reach puberty since the dawn of time, and that is the time when the humans "go forth" and face all kinds of new challenges, from the army to having kids to having to work to support a new family and so on. And yet now in this tiny span of time, we have basically eradicated the *ability* for humans to shift into adulthood when they need to, and we have eradicated any coming of age challenges. Resulting in a variety of symptoms, IMO. I don't know of any research done on this, it's my own idea but I never seem to think up anything original so I'm betting someone far smarter than me has already thought of it and written about it. RC

Sure. Everyone LOVES the idea of working for a living while others are paid not to. :-) Pretty sure we've tested that theory already. Now think carefully: as our culture advances toward and into AI, our culture also advances into having far fewer children. But we are pressed, "No you must import tons of people from places that hate you! And tons of people that want a different government and liberties than your country has and can vote! Because you need the uncontrolled number of children they breed!" Well MAYBE nature in its interesting evolutionary and "synchronicity" wisdom, arranged LOWER BIRTH RATE at the same time that the future would have LESS WORK to be done. See how that all works out? But it doesn't work out at all if we import endless millions who can barely do the most rudimentary jobs even now, and will breed exponentially more children. If a company doesn't have enough work or creative options for more than 100 people, IT DOES NOT BRING THEM IN. I don't see why it should be greatly different for a country. Humor: I never thought of this connection before writing this post. So if I'm a cretin it's developed in the last 3 minutes. RC

I don't believe the tabula rasa concept at all. Raising a child from birth solved much of that for me... observing humanity most the rest.... raising tons of animals over time helped... then reading on twin studies sealed it. If anything, I think a rather huge -- way more huge than we realize -- percentage of our preferences and personalities are genetically defined. What IS culturally defined is that we hate-hate-hate the idea that anything is genetically defined. Partly because we think it interferes with free will. But partly because psychos killing people in the name of genetic claims (still going on in parts of the world btw) has given the entire topic the cooties, to a degree that used to require the Vatican's involvement. {Besides, if culture was all there was, we wouldn't have gays, and they wouldn't claim they were born that way. This is not my argument for why tabula rasa is not legit, it's just another observation.} RC

I am pretty sure that having in general longer arms, longer legs, a different form of attachment of the muscles in the shoulders, and things like that are not very "vestigial." Fwiw. RC

Thanks for that -- I hadn't seen that one yet. I'd seen these two: Q: The Plan to Save the World and Q: Killing the Mockingbird (about media) RC

This isn't youtube but still super interesting :-) http://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=5819097910001 RC

Nice. I have an original Les Paul, a sunburst, did have a mod to add a wawa bar back in the early 70s. My 18th birthday present, back when I used to live & breathe that stuff. :-) RC

I'm to two hours in now and it's not over, not sure about the 20 minute ref -- there's been some great guitar all through this! Thanks for that. RC

I'm sorry this isn't youtube but it opens the video. So fun!! RC

I should maybe put this in the what are you listening to thread, but it's on youtube and the instrument is so cool :-)

Wikileaks has been compromised and in the hands of deepstate for quite some time now. Although they had a few things automated to go out, you should consider everything they publish in any venue -- and that includes the julian assange identities -- to be suspect. RC

I liked this humorous groove better the more of it I heard (though it might have been slightly better after the first verse)

Earl Grey that video reminds me of the (funnier) Weird Al parody White & Nerdy (with Donny Osmond in the background no less)

He's good but I can see no stars but Tommy. :-) I do have a special love for Eric Johnson still but he is from my youth. :-) He incorporated Chet Atkins' riff into this song and I loved it.

Just so ya know, Tommy Emmanuel is the most awesome guitarist on earth. Even the more-obviously awesomest guitarists think he's an animal-god. This small-theatre live conf is just ridiculous fun and of course is a wide range of everything. He's the sort that is either breathtakingly inspiring or makes you wanna go home and burn your guitar. RC

Well compared to y'all I'm a real hippie. I actually woke up and found myself singing this song all the way through the other day. I have no idea why, I don't think I've heard it in eons. I figured I better stop singing before I segued into American Pie or something.

9th: I once saw a woman who was so beautiful that for a moment I think my heart stopped. I'm a woman, and I don't swing that way, so there was nothing in it of that kind of attraction. Beautiful people are walking works of art. Some "exceed their gender" as I put it. But rarely... you gotta wonder how it's even possible, I guess. Certainly I would pity any man who ran into her. (Edited to add: although I guess it could be seen as a brief blessing, just for the honor of the experience!) My best friend in college was from Nigeria. He told me the story of this tribe in his country that are untouchables. They evolved a strange and funny means of survival: their women are so stunningly beautiful that allegedly -- and he swears this is not just folklore -- it nearly stops men in their tracks, and as they stand there hyperventilating in near shock, or sometimes go to her mindlessly, she touches them all over -- and their tribe would have nothing to do with them after. They would choose the most handsome men in order to have the most beautiful girl children from the pairing, to repeat the cycle. The men near that region were in fear of ever seeing one of them -- like some kind of mermaid siren that would be your doom. Actually I never thought about the parallel in those stories before! RC

"There are some ideas so bad only an intellectual could believe them." -- George Orwell

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible." "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." "I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe." -- Richard Phillips Feynman "I seem to be a verb." -- Buckminster Fuller "God has no religion." -- M. Gandhi