Sophistry's delight

Last night was a bit of a downer for me. Frustrating, when a truth dawns on me and a self-created bubble pops. I often refuse to accept the truth because of the will to power, as in my consciousness is what is most important to me, my perceptions and ideas. My race and ethnicity are a part of me but not one that I particularly like to think define me, even though it does. One thing that I end up doing is meandering through electronics. It is a fun game, finding little gems, highly depreciated and good value ones. It is a game, and no different than a woman going shopping for fashion. So here's one. Behold, the HTC A9. And you can buy it for $99 . (Full disclosure, that is an ebay affiliate link which I just created an account for). I want to buy it. I shouldn't because I already have a better product: the iPhone 6s. But I want to because this is such a good deal. It also appears that it has comparable audio quality to the HTC 10, which is $300 new. I was looking...

Black Pigeon Speaks makes the case for Japan becoming the hegemon of Asia in the coming decades . I've followed BPS for several years now. 2014 was an important year. It was the year of ISIL rampaging across the Middle East, which is proof that the end is no end. It was the year that I joined the military. The previous few years I had started reading up on geopolitics, because I felt that it held an explanation for my predicament in life. I did find an answer, in fact, which I will elaborate in later posts. This argument is one that I have heard before. George Friedman said it many years ago and I think BPS ripped it off from him. I came to Friedman by way of Robert Kaplan who used to post these epic great articles in The Atlantic Monthly which were grim, realistic, and epic. I need to put more photos on this blog to improve readability.

I feel like I've had a bubble pierced. But I knew it was a bubble all along. That is why I played along with it. It was a fantasy. A silly one. An unusual one. One so unusual that I found it stimulating and interesting. Interesting, but not especially healthy or realistic. Ultimately, it was a fantasy. Life was not supposed to go like this. I was thinking about it today. I am like an orphan dropped off here in this country, the United States. The language barrier makes it so that I am cut off from my extended family. My thoughts, my dreams, my emotions, my frames of reference are all in English. I feel kinship to England in a very intellectual way that I do not feel kinship to Taiwan, where my family is from. Part of it is the contempt of familiarity. Within the people of Taiwan I see my own flaws. My own flaws are magnified by mere fact of being a minority here. I was thinking tonight that I was acting like a cuck, in the alt-right terminology. My relationship with the alt...

I was not totally outraged at her death. It was indeed an accidental shooting from the looks of it. You could also argue that the prosecution overreached by charging him with intentionality. It honestly appears to be an accident. And the people who are harping about the case are really acting on the fact that the shooter is an illegal Mexican immigrant. It could easily have been a teenager who accidentally discharged the weapon.  But acquitting him of involuntary manslaughter is insane. From the NRO , this appears to be a textbook case of involuntary man slaughter.  b) Involuntary—in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony; or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, or without due caution and circumspection. Wouldn’t firing a gun in a crowded public place amount to an act that might produce death in an unlawful manner, without due caution and circumspection? Doesn’t Zarate’s account amount to a conf...

I was a teenager in the 1990's. An unhappy one at that. It is odd looking back now, in my 30's. Those are the years you are strongest. I can now trace back how the cultural narratives and the conceptual frameworks of that time set me up for disappointment. I hope that if I ever have children, I can do them better on this front. But of course, a moment in time is always something that is fragile and momentary. Times do change. With my luck, my kid will be a rap music listening transsexual opioid addict, as these pitfalls have emerged prominently in recent years. When my father was my age, I was six years old. Gadget lust occurs often with me. It is worse with other people I know. Other people I know who are average people earning very average livings will talk about how they want to buy the $1000 iPhone X, which objectively is a complete waste of money. But why does it occur? There is this feeling of progress that you get with these things. Every next gadget is a st...

I am writing on my little blog here because I have wasted so much time and energy on message boards. And why did I do so? Typically, it works like this: I have an idea. I want to talk about it with someone. None of my real life friends want to talk about it. I actually have few friends, and precious few who want to talk about weird stuff that I am interested in. They have lives. Things to take care of. And so on. So I go to an anonymous message board. I put out my thought. Someone, equally discombobulated, equally detached, responds. Then we hash out the idea. But this other anonymous person is an unknown. Often, they are freaks of some sort that if met in real life would be avoided. But no one knows you are a dog on the internet. It goes round and round. People with emotional issues will post it, bringing up their preoccupations with oppression. The worst is race, and it will often be brought up in say, fuel efficiency debates. So, in a moment of clarity, which are rare,...

The issue of transsexual pronouns is ludicrous. It is ludicrous because of its sheer absurdity and cumbersomeness. But beyond all of that, it is a form of thought control. Simply put, the pronoun issue is about controlling your thought even when the transsexual is not in the room. If you think about it, pronouns are not  used when someone is in the room. Using the pronoun when the person is in the room is in a way, disrespectful. When someone is in the room, you say, "Jenny's book," not "her book." So why are transsexuals so adamant about the pronoun issue? Because they don't just want tolerance and respect. They want you  deep down to accept them as they see themselves. They want to define reality. They want to win any debate over the issue. This is about kow-towing. This is about kissing the ring.