Thoughts are my own sprinkled with curiosity, humility,and open-mindedness.
Milkyway Galaxy
Joined June 2009
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MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
This whole thing trying to pit Eric vs Bret is dumb. They’re both good guys. Eric is just a hardline Zionist and, for a lot of you, that’s enough to make him a monster. Given the seriousness of Israel’s crimes I won’t try to Talk you out of it, I’ll just say that, according to many people on Eric’s side of the Israel issue, including many of Eric’s friends, I’m evil incarnate, but Eric has always treated me according to my actual words and behavior, and has never allowed my harsh criticism of Israel to keep him from treating me as an individual worthy of respect. As someone firmly on the other side of the issue, of course I think Eric’s Zionism creates blind spots in his moral system, but I don’t delude myself that I don’t have blind spots of my own.
For all those who think that if Eric was into something, then Bret, his brother, must clearly be involved as well, frankly you have missed a few episodes of this drama that have played out in public. For one Bret has called out Israel's atrocious conduct, its disastrous wars and the influence operations Israel has been pulling off in the USA.
But also, the two brothers have not been aligned messagewise since COVID. Eric went along for a long time. Bret didn't. Eric stood by Sam Harris, even as Bret was the target of Sam's attacks. Many other such cases for those who have been following.
Bret is paying a price for not wanting to call out his brother in public. This is my own inference from public information, not some secret I am revealing.
For instance, here is what (I now understand was) an attempt by Eric, involving Sam Harris and Konstantin Kisin, to get Bret to disown me, as a way of getting back in the good graces of certain circles. Bret never threw me under the bus even though I have 0% of the clout these people have.
It's easy to see the two brothers as a single unit (cough @scotthortonshow cough) but in reality they are nearly as far apart as two brothers with public platform can get without starting an open foodfight.
xitter.gq/alexandrosM/status/171…
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
"There is no scientific or genetic baseline for an IQ specific to the Berber (Imazighen) indigenous peoples of North Africa."
😆 🤣 😂
People talking about IQ too much is a red flag.
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
The gender wars discourse is perfectly summarized here. Both feminists and the red pill extremists make hasty generalizations about the opposite sex based on their poor mate selection abilities and refuse to work on themselves, while using pseudoscience to argue their opinions.
I’ve compared the red pill and 4th wave branches of feminism to each other repeatedly - it continues to play out. Typically people who ascribe to either mentality are being rejected in the dating pool because they’re at their core losers.
Few people want a spouse who operates like a bonus child or who is looking for a free slave in marriage. Grow up.
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
When I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for a tour last month, as a pre-conference event for a conference where I was speaking, I decided I need more art in my life. I’m not an artist. But I want to understand beauty better. I picked up this little book that gives you sketching exercises. This is how November sketching is going in my commonplace journal:
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in November of 1975, Gordon Lightfoot recorded the song about it in 1976, and in 1977, when I was 22, I got a job at the primitive resort on Isle Royale in the middle of Lake Superior that involved renting wooden boats to tourists.
We all sang that song to each other night and day, and the idea that Superior "never gave up her dead" was a pretty compelling image to all of us. Even the ocean floats bodies to shore for loved ones to bury and properly mourn. Superior keeps them forever.
The workers there were mostly tough Finnish-ancestry farm kids, with a scattering of random college-break fellows like me, a kid from Oregon seeing the country.
On days off, I would rent a boat to myself and some friends, and one day we set out across the lake to one of the many mid-lake small islands. In a fashion much like Lightfoot records in the song, on one of these trips a slashing wind seemed to come out of nowhere, and in five minutes I was as scared as I had ever been.
I kept the bow pointed straight into the huge waves, knowing that if I got even a little sideways, we would flip for sure.
As it was, I worried that we would flip end-over-end even if I stayed headed into the wind. The waves were like damned mountains.
And the water was ice-cold even in summer. No way we'd swim against the wind and survive. Our 14-foot boat would shudder on each crest, and crash down the side, and climb again, almost vertical. Endlessly.
All I could think was, get to the lee, get to the lee of the little island ahead of us. Took maybe 10 minutes, and we did get there shaken but okay.
The waves had indeed turned the minutes to hours.
Superior is its own reality. Most Americans know nothing about it; I didn't before I got the job out there, but it is beautiful, dark, Gothic, implacable, merciless.
Kills people all the time.
One reason Lightfoot resonates is that he's the only songwriter who ever captured the terrible majesty of the place, and gave it the respect it deserves.
RIP Mr. Lightfoot.
And if you ever go to Superior, be careful.
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
Some of the best advice I can give the young man is to cherish your mother. What I mean is to try and really appreciate all she does, including the things that seem mundane or even annoy.
It is the big items you see at the time. It is the little stuff you miss when it's gone.
MathemagicianArithmachick retweeted
A little girl had the sweetest reaction to being surprised with a stray dog she visited at a local shelter in Franklin, Tennessee. abcnews.visitlink.me/a7ASls
