Selflessness: Alex O'Connor vs Ask Yourself on Veganism and the Meaning of Life.

It's not a drop in the ocean: the ocean is you. #vegan #vegans #veganism

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ICn1h77mU

Vivisection Lately: Wayne Hsiung is Back in Jail.

You may or may not recognize Wayne in the two minute video, above (he's on camera momentarily).

Here he is giving an interview about the event after getting out of jail:

https://wtmj.com/shows/wisconsins-midday-news/2026/03/18/leader-of-break-in-at-ridglan-farms-out-of-jail-shares-story/

AFAIK, Wayne is now married with kids… so you might think his days of making a martyr out of himself were over… but, at any rate, he's married to one of the morons from Animal Rising (formerly known as Animal Rebellion, originally a faction that split off from Extinction Rebellion) Rose Patterson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRR5kZtNUBk

[Other voices:] The cycle of Durianrider-style defamation continues.

(1) Some guy got tens of thousands of views for his short video clips calling her a Neo-Nazi.
(2) Perhaps for this reason (i.e., motivated by view-counts) he then doubled down and tried to further back up these accusations over a period of about a year.
(3) Following the same pattern whereby Durianrider encouraged members of his audience to take action against me, members of this guy's audience managed to get this married couple's (allegedly Neo-Nazi) "retreat" canceled, managed to get them kicked off of some neo-pagan website they'd been participating in, and she vaguely claims she and her husband are now considering moving into a new house "for safety reasons" —i.e., because of this obloquy.
(4) She admits that she is personal friends with Evelina Hahne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelina_Hahne) who is a member (or leader) of a tiny political party called Alternative for Sweden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Sweden) but insists that she is not involved with politics in any way herself. This waffling reveals that the extent to which she actually is a Neo-Nazi is irrelevant: the overweening question is merely of the consequences of someone calling her a Neo-Nazi on social media.

It's an imperfect parallel, but absolutely nobody was interested in what my sex life actually was when Durianrider made accusations against me (nobody even asked me about that in interviews at the time)… the controversy exclusively concerned the consequences of the allegations about my sex life being made (for an audience of hundreds of thousands of idiots looking for an excuse to punish someone for their perceived moral inferiority).

The glorification of the Vikings (their history, their religion, their politics) overlaps with Neo-Nazi ideology to an even greater extent than the study of Ancient Rome. In my own idiom, it is all a little too Golden Axe for its own good.

I remarked to a friend recently that one of my reasons for not learning one of those languages is that it would inevitably draw me into the debunking of myths that now glorify the Vikings in retrospect. I admit, it is not too late for me to change my mind and start learning Finnish, but the average Finn would be truly horrified to hear what I have to say about the Vikings, generally, and about Viking religion, specifically.

I'm reminded of Schopenhauer's commentary on the culture of fighting duels in Europe: "the point of honor" had nothing to do with whether or not the accusation was true, but merely whether or not the other man would dare to say it. The medieval logic was, "If you dare to say this about me publicly, these are the consequences" —true or false. The fact that one man had slept with another man's wife, for example, was of no significance: the point of honor to be addressed was that one man insulted the other by saying that he had done so.

We also have an unresolved question of "taking responsibility for our own political views" —past, present and future. What does it mean for a Communist to take responsibility for being a Communist, today? What does it mean for us to say that we have freedom of speech, and freedom to support any political party we may choose, if the consequences for choosing an unpopular party entail denunciation, obloquy, unemployability or even death?

Communism, although dangerous, has become the ideology of foppish and effete elites —so much so that it's hard to take it seriously. Neo-Nazism, by contrast, has become the ideology of the ignorant, especially in prisons. I don't think anyone knows, now, what "taking it seriously" would really mean. Many mainstream religions are equally dangerous, or even more so, and yet nobody takes atheism seriously. We cannot really articulate the danger and difficulty of these political ideologies without taking nihilism seriously. These are illnesses that cannot be properly perceived without the contrast provided by their antidotes.

It's not about sex: how HBO will ruin Season 3 of HOTD.

You may not believe me, but there are a few people in the audience who have been waiting since 2022 for this. Trust me, I've had messages from them. ;-)

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usmhWltm1hc

Envy is Information You Can Work With.

Google tells me I'm the first person to use the phrase, "Envy is Information You Can Work With". Hard to believe someone hasn't said it before, frankly.

• If you want to do 200 push-ups today, you can do it.
• If you want to start studying a new language today, you can do it.
• If you want to do humanitarian work, you can do it.
• Reading Aristotle or Thucydides? What's stopping you?

You can take this as positive encouragement OR NOT. If you respond so negatively to the suggestion that there's a better person you could be five years from now, if you figure out what kind of person you want to be and do the work, your response tells me something about you: reacting so negatively to these suggestions doesn't tell the world anything about me —it's neither a critique of the advice, nor of the person giving it.

Debunking the Dunning Kruger Effect: Nihilism and Religious Attitudes Disguised as Science.

The Science of Stupidity.

Link to the Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRK-njQIiWw

Link to the podcast version: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7zivATFIzj1fJ2q5GxQA6I

^ This is Spotify, but if you search around you can find the same podcast episode on every other major platform… wherever podcasts are "sold".

It'll make a writer out of me. This spinal injury. ;-)

If this is your political philosophy, live your life accordingly.

Possibly foreshadowing my (long awaited?) return to podcasting about "the philosophy of" ASOIAF and its adaptations. Quite possibly.

LINK: https://youtu.be/BKSygw-xqR4

A Lottery: Elite Education in the Western World.

This one has interesting connections to what I've published in all three books, so far: (1) No More Manifestos, obviously, (2) Future of an Illusion, cryptically, and (3) Blood in the Snow, positively esoterically. Nobody will recognize what I'm doing (in these decades) as the proposal of a new kind of "philosophy of education"… BUT IT IS. ;-)

And this is now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc., as never before.

LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4sM3mWvKQp7lCPs90hVrBI

Ocean acidification update: yes, this is the end of the world.

Quote,

"Earth’s oceans have become approximately 30% more acidic since the industrial revolution began more than 200 years ago… Analyses of coral skeletons from the past century revealed that CO2 has been accumulating in North American waters faster than in the atmosphere, driving rapid acidification."

Digression: you may not be aware that the ocean both absorbs and also emits carbon dioxide, with the ("net") balance between the two changing due to a variety of bizarre factors… such as how much wind is stirring up "deep" (relatively high-carbon) water in the so-called "cold tongue" of the South Pacific. Yes, in case you hadn't noticed that 21st century rappers have run out of endearing stage names, the English language has become so depleted that we have had to resort to "cold tongue" as jargon.

"The ocean becomes more acidified when carbon dioxide dissolves to form an acid that releases hydrogen and bicarbonate ions, lowering the water’s pH level… Organic matter — dead plants and animals — sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where it decomposes and releases carbon dioxide back into the water. Upwelling surfaces this CO2 rich water, increasing the acidity of subsurface and surface zones."

Could we propose a total ban on the idiom "carbon rich"? This use of the adjective rich for anything other than vegan chocolate pudding substitutes… ?

"Between 1888 and 2020, coral skeletons indicate that CO2 in seawater increased at a rate that outpaced the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. [Emphasis added —EM] The magnitude of acidification was also higher 100 to 200 meters below the surface, even though ocean acidification is typically characterized as a surface process."

Here's the point at which I disagree with the article being quoted:

"'This is no time for nihilism. The ocean is not destroyed,' …"

On the contrary, the time for nihilism is now. Right now. Before it's too late.