Fallor Ergo Sum

Late night rant on appreciating civilization. I've always looked at what I have with amazement. As a little kid, my dad would read me the picture book “How Things Work.” I couldn't believe people had engineered things so complicated that I could turn a handle and clean water would come out, or heat would keep me cozy through a wooden vent on my floor in a blizzard. There is nothing normal about having a toilet in your home, a refrigerator, or taking a flight on any airline. I feel unworthy of how much I inherited without having to understand or truly suffer for any of it. All day we interact with creature comforts few of us understand at all. America once built bridges at a speed we now struggle to imagine, even with our billions in “funding,” because we have lost our spirit to build a great society. That's why this growing culture of victimhood in Western countries frustrates me so much. We live in a tiny sliver of human history where ordinary people can enjoy comforts that kings couldn't dream up. Life can still be hard, and it is for many. But we have become so accustomed to what works for us that we barely acknowledge it, while convincing ourselves we've been cheated out of something even better. We point to centuries of injustice without much desire to say thanks or ask what we can add before we leave this life. We don't seem to admire people like Nikola Tesla or Ben Franklin anymore. We credit narcissists whose only job has been politics with the sunset, even when they have never added an ounce of prosperity to this world. Meanwhile, we dismiss great engineers and inventors as bigots from the past for not living up to today's “moral” standards. We seem so willing to tear into the foundations of all of it because someone has persuaded us that the person who built a successful company is the reason another person is sleeping outside. We have lost the courage to do good when it might cost us the appearance of being good. We let people destroy themselves with drugs on the sidewalk and call it compassion. We tolerate the people supplying them. We slap people on the wrist for horrific acts of violence and assault, sacrificing other people's safety and sometimes their lives for this faux empathy. We hand over enormous amounts of public money to organizations whose employees keep getting paid while the suffering they exist to address becomes permanent. And our only new solution seems to be more money, to the point that we brag about spending rather than results, whether it's education or homelessness. We don't acknowledge the suffering that came before us. The brutality, hunger and disease that shaped life in every ethnicity and on every continent. We've become so protective of our comfort that even having children and raising them can sound like an unreasonable interruption to our insatiable appetite for entertainment. I'm afraid we'll keep consuming what we inherited until we no longer have the conviction to defend or maintain it. There are people who would happily take power over a society too divided and demoralized to believe it's worth preserving. We would miss our freedoms very quickly and long for our previous “oppressors.” Lately, I think the impulse to have a family, and put your energy into the people you can actually be there for us the truest part of life. But I don't want a private refuge while things deteriorate. I want this to last. I really want us all to make it, and for good to beat evil. I want us to care enough about what we have to build something our children and the world will be grateful to inherit. And not just tangible goods but a high trust society that has community. To do that, we have to fight this constant teaching of ingratitude, this belief that grievances about the past have any possibility to save us. I want our children to feel the amazement of humanity's achievements with deep gratitude. This could all fall if we don't do that. Man working on a Steam engine, 1920 🇺🇸.

We went to see Bob Dylan play in Zurich tonight with extremely low expectations. He is eighty five for gods sake and playing these huge stadiums every two or three nights. I thought we would be going to pay respect and it could be night full of poignancy. Well, I was way off, Bob has as always adapted to being completely himself and played a profound set to his muse. He completely ignores the audience saving a hilarious double thumbs up at the end, the single sign he even noticed 15,000 people watching him. He wore his northface black parka WITH THE HOOD UP the entire time, never spoke a single word to the crowd, and seemed to find applause either annoying or irrelevant. So not really giving anything at the social level. But then goving absolutely eve try thing and more to the muse at the musical level. Extremely hot band woven into his every move. Extremely creative reinvention of songs both old and new. A slow, poignant tangled up in Blue, some chords changed too. His elderly voice cannot do what it could twenty or fifty or sixty years ago; but it can do other things … the wobbles of age become a feature, chromatic adornment on the way to where he is going. There is a feeling of mastery, total safety as the rules of time and pitch get stretched and safely returned. I think potentially he changed the key of a piece or two and the band quickly scrambled to catch up. He finished with his most Blakean song, “every grain of sand”. It was a total prvilege to be within 50m of him, i could not believe it was real.

D'un autre côté, attaquer ses alliés c'est quasiment une doctrine pour lui, finalement c'est cohérent.

BREAKING: Europe is under a massive widespread cyber attack right now Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Ireland the Netherlands and just now Finland are all experiencing disruptions to supermarket refrigeration systems causing food to go off. The attack is spreading...

biden pulled the keystone xl permit his first day in office, 800,000 barrels a day meant for the texas gulf coast. now canada builds it and picks up the tab

I tried.

BREAKING: 🇳🇿 New Zealand stops funding to UNRWA, joins 🇺🇸🇸🇪🇫🇮. FM: “We want to know our money is going for a legitimate purpose. And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out it certainly was not. We're not financing cases where they actually engage with terrorists.”

So, basically, 500 million Europeans expect 300 million Americans to protect them from 120 million Russians who can’t even defeat 40 million Ukrainians while those 500 million Europeans don’t even realize they are being conquered by 2 billion Muslims who claim they are being persecuted by 8 million Israelis. Is that about right? 1

"They killed us." With these words Novaya Gazeta, Russia's most famous independent newspaper, announced it is closing. Six of its people were murdered under Putin. 🧵Here is what Russia is losing. [1/12]

that’s ok, i hope your kids receive all the rape and murder you wish for Palestinian children

Hating on Islam has become a trend now,did they really think we'd be hurt by their hatred?We know our faith and what our religion stands for.Learn to distinguish religion from culture,your Islamophobia says more about your mentality than it does about our religion

There is no cheap wind and solar energy when you’re powering your electrical grid. Wind and solar is fine for small remote applications, but harvesting sunshine and breezes takes lots of equipment and land to capture the diffuse and intermittent energy in the weather.

How very Zionist of you. Only Jewish suffering matters, the rest is just normal history.

Xwitter would be a lot less annoying if I could block by country.