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One of the richest ironies is that the academic humanities are disparaged as an idle hobby at the same time that the Elon demographic is certain that these academics have somehow unleashed a set of cheat codes that threaten to override everything else in industry and technology.

Given the tendency of academic reviewers to become less reliable with more leniency (as during lockdown), and the tendency of academic presses to make cooler book designs with more time, and given the delays involved in academic publishing...
We are probably near or in the historical nadir for unhinged books that look really cool.

The emergence of a German nation-state is just output from Frederick the Great, who's basically following the response of Frederick the Soldier King after the Peace of Westphalia.

After the collapse of "universal monarchies," both France and Spain are out of the "continental superpower" business.

Between the Anglos' victory lap and the German consolidation, you basically have the table set for WWI. And so on and so on.

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Most of history after 1700 just seems like follow-through to me. Like the American revolution, the Spirit of '48, and the march of liberalism just seems like a victory la(r)p for the Protestant Republics after the Glorious Revolution.

If you were the Onion writer who coined one of the classics, would it be more psychologically healthy to think that Apollo had cursed you with prophecy, or that your darkest moments of cynicism had actually ripped off the superfices of reality and exposed the cyclical and patterned qualities of human depravity?

There is power in the blood. Wonder-working power. Would you be free from your passionate pride?

Saying, "It's not about me," and hoping that reverberates in the spirit of others.

The Wilsonian premises of statehood are institutional cover for segregationist and eliminationist projects that proved useful to the grand strategy of north Atlantic powers during their 20th century struggle with a Central Eurasian power.

@codicil

so weird that every website started doing this at exactly the same time that every app stopped being a real app and just became a website in a zip file

Normies like to say something is "extremely complicated" when actually it can be described with two or three uncommon-to-obscure terms. People simply don't have good vocabularies and it hinders their capacities to reason about the phenomena around them.

Anyway, read books.

Open are the double doors of the horizon
Unlocked are its bolts

I am working with a highly disorganized person in a semi-superior position. She keeps trying to put things on my schedule 1 day in advance in bizarre and unhelpful times that force me to cancel on her. So far I've been very apologetic and helping her to save face, but I think I'm going to stop helping her save face pretty soon.

I think that east asian cultures may have a good angle with this dynamic.

Kinda showed my cards to a colleague by mentioning that I like Machiavelli. Whoopsie poopsie.

People ask me, "How do you know about that?" And I tell them, "I know what knives and spoons are. I know what the Steven Universe wiki is."

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