Apparition of Jack

I’ll bet you $50 right now that she has a massive crash out within the next five years. There’s a lot of unprocessed grief and anger inside of her that is being masked by the glitzy attraction of money and fame. This is utterly unhealthy for everyone involved.

The more I think about it, the more I feel terrible for her. It’s been what, a month? since Charlie’s death, and this poor woman literally hasnt had a single second just to breathe and process it all. Before all this, she was a nobody. Literally just the wife of some podcast guy. No one knew or cared about her, and it probably suited her the best. But now after the Right has tried to make Charlie into some sort of martyr and has jumped at the chance to elevate her into some new “conservative icon”, she’s being exposed to levels of scrutiny and toxicity that basically no one - least of all a grieving widow - should endure. American culture is sick. There’s no peace even in fucking death of all things. This is absurd. Just fucking wrong. Goddamn.

https://x.com/uncommonsince76/status/2002202137145847821?s=46 Someone needs to take Erika Kirk and get her away from all these freaks trying to cash in on her grief. Some concerned relative or friend should basically whisk her away to a log cabin somewhere and tell her just to take as much time need to cool off away from all these sickos. Dont get me wrong, I still think her politics suck, but she’s literally a young mother who had her husband shot on live TV. If nothing else is proof that the modern “conservative” movement is just a way for a bunch of delirious freaks trying to cash in on everything sacred - even human grief itself - then this is it. Literal “The Boys” levels of absurdity all round.

Unironically dementia + partial strokes have made him more unhinged in the last few months. When your brain gets damaged your filters come off and it’s not uncommon for people to turn into bigger asses than they already were.

Dragon sickness is one hell of a drug. I can’t imagine having that much wealth and still fearing you don’t have enough.

Fuck Trump. Fuck this evil, endless culture of corporate grift so that these monsters can literally rape little girls and think they can get away with it. Fuck all the satanic evil festering around the halls of power that puts ego, violence, greed and sexual assault before the needs of the millions of people both within and without the United States. A reckoning is coming. Truth can only be suppressed for so long before it rears its ferocious head like a blazing Sun and puts to end all the vile, godless evil that threatens the very stability of the earth we live on. Trump is going down. An awakening is coming.

To add to this, I really think promoting education in Islam societies will go a huge way to diminish the extremism. Perhaps moreso than any other religion in the modern age, Islam tends to be an all-encompassing ideology for its believers that can be used to explain away just about anything, regardless of how helpful or not it is. A young kid struggling with school? He’s not depressed and needs to see a counsellor, he just doesn’t pray enough and is ungrateful to God! Someone got cancer? It wasn’t because they were drinking 2L of Pepsi every day, it was because they watched too much Western tv and lost faith in Islam! A sheik got caught embezzling $100 million from the state treasury? Well he’s a holy man, who are we to judge? Basically, I think Islamic societies need a strong dose of Stage Orange rationality, science, free-thinking and secularism, rather than the toxic Stage Blue(/even Purple in some cases) fundamentalism and superstition that defines too much of conservative Islamic thought. More Muslim scientists, academics, engineers, blogposters, journalists, businesspeople, mathematicians, etc etc and less insane sheiks, muftis, imams etc spewing highly dogmatic and oppressive nonsense.

Islam needs a serious reform movement to bring it in line with the modern world imo. There are tons of abhorrent teachings in the Bible (how to own slaves, which heathens to kill etc) yet if you seriously suggested bringing back slavery 99% of modern Christians would scoff at the idea. I don’t see why Islam couldn’t be any different. Yes the Quran says to kill nonbelievers, to chop hands off thieves etc, but ultimately a society’s development level will influence which teachings they listen to, not the other way around. I think Islam needs a serious, internal reform movement that uses Quranic teaching to emphasises non-violence, religious tolerance, etc. Greater emphasis on doing good deeds and generosity rather than a strict, literalist interpretation that supports violence and oppression. How this would work? I don’t know. I’m not Muslim, and I don’t know much about Muslim countries. Maybe some Sufi leaders or other humanistic preachers could lead this movement. Whatever the case, I think Islam as an institution needs to do some serious soul-searching in the coming years. The wanton acceptance of violence in too much of modern Islamic thought is unacceptable.

Apparently the guy who was recorded stopping the gunman was a Muslim named Ahmed Al Ahmed who owns a grocery store in Sutherland Shire. Honestly this is a huge sigh of relief for me, as someone with Muslim friends it always feels shitty knowing that events like these make them more of a target, so the fact that the guy who saved lives was Muslim goes a long way at dispelling the narrative that they’re all violent radicals. And like, what other example of pure Sydney heroism is there than a Muslim grocery guy who probably lets you keep the extra bananas you can’t afford when you’re tight on cash stopping a bunch of Jihadi radicals from killing more Jewish festival goers? The guy is an instant legend in my book. It’s still scary times but thank heavens something positive can come out of this. God knows we need it

Damn as a Sydneysider this hits way too close to home :’( It’s really hard to find the words to know to what to say. Regardless of your opinions political violence is just awful all around. I guess I’m just praying for the victims and all of Sydney as a whole. May they rest in peace 🙏

Here’s a great video about Georgism, how it works, and how it could solve society’s problems. I think it’s fascinating.

The logic of a LVT is that it prevents rent-seeking and unjust profits being accumulated for doing nothing. If someone buys a vacant lot in a suburb for $50,000, and then 10 years later that suburb becomes on of the trendiest places to live so demand for land increases, that person is now able to sell that vacant lot for $500,000 without ever having produced anything or improved society in anyway. Their entire wealth comes from closing off valuable land to society in order to sell in the future, making construction more costly for everyone whilst providing no value in return. Likewise an LVT applies to natural resources. Which person created coal, oil, minerals etc? The answer is “no one”, if someone is getting rich off goods that have existed since before humanity was around, in some sense that represents a crime against all the people in a society who share the same land. By taxing a mining company for the value of that land - which would account for the uncreated raw resources on said land - you’re effectively saying “the wealth from these resources belongs to everyone in this society, not just the person who happened to have the land they were on, since no one created these resources and hence the profits from them shouldn’t just belong to an individual or private entity.” Basically, no one invented land, no one invented coal, etc, so for companies to get rich off the hoarding and closing off of these resources, it leads to negative financial incentives that don’t actually improve society and instead funnel wealth to entities that don’t actually produce anything at the end of the day. There’s more to it than that, but I think that’s the basic jist of it.

What have you been hiding from us, Leo?

Where’s Dan Bilzerian’s healthcare plane? What does he plan to do about predatory corporate subscriptions models and the enshitification of the internet? How will he crack down on white collar crime? I suspect he doesn’t have any answer to any of these, because he’s just another stupid right-wing grifter trying to make a quick buck by “fighting woke” or whatever.

The other dumb thing is that these politicians never talk about the CAUSES of immigration. People blamed Merkel for taking in 1.5 million Syrians - as if Syria wasn’t experiencing a brutal civil war (which in my crackpot understanding was influenced by the destabilisation of Iraq by the US a few years earlier, but whatever) and that these people should’ve just… disappeared off the face of the earth or something. It’s the same thing with people complaining about “military-age males” immigrating from Africa - yeah, no shit, these men are fleeing because they DONT WANT TO FIGHT IN TRIBAL WARS (there’s like a dozen raging right now, it’s fucked.) The dipshit anti-immigration nationalist doesn’t understand that we live on a single planet. Borders are only conditional at best. The ACTUAL best way to reduce immigration would be to support stabilising policies in poorer nations and invest in economic opportunities there, so people don’t become desperate enough to try their hand at Europe / North America for a better life. But would these idiots ever actually do that too? No, instead they’re usually the morons SUPPORTING foreign military campaigns into these unstable countries and do shit like cut USAID (where do you think all the people USAID keeps alive are going to go for safety? Heres a hint: it’s not Cambodia.) We live on one planet. Events in Ghana or Columbia influence what happens in Europe or America. Shutting yourself off isn’t just morally questionable, it just straight-up backfires.