à bas le ciel

Monday, 23 March 2026

Women are not equal because they do not want to be equal. #feminism

Fifth wave feminism.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WazWrNHQR14

And some people say I'm a narcissist.

The title of this page on Reddit is, incongruously, "à-bas-le-ciel is NOT a Narcissist", posted by someone called Genoskill, i.e., someone unknown to me (if they've ever communicated with me directly, it's under another name, and I don't know the connection between the two, etc.).

—————

[O_SAPIENTIA writes:]

I think we all, at some point, desperately wanted to believe that Eisel's "eccentric" antics were a sort of method-behind-the-madness. I really wanted to believe that he actually was this brilliant genius that was extremely competent at everything he put his mind to, pushing for people to better themselves through intellectualism and ethics.

But after a few years, after one too many videos of his belligerent critiques against anyone and everyone, his constant self-aggrandizing, his complete incapability to tolerate anyone who he's not fucking, the mask falls off. That is who he actually is. A man with grandiose ideas and a spiteful tongue who is in love with himself in the most deluded way possible.

We all gave him the benefit of the doubt once.

—————

(1) What if you're allowed to have your own opinion AND THAT'S OKAY.

Like, dude, what if you dislike the style or substance of my youtube videos (or both) and that's not really the basis for any kind of diagnosis of a mental disability on my part.

(2) What if there's a difference between a youtube video as performance art and the actual person you're judging and diagnosing here:

"But after a few years, after one too many videos of his belligerent critiques against anyone and everyone…"

Yeah, well, over-the-top critiques = a genre of youtube video.

It's not necessarily a personality type: it's not necessarily "who I really am".

Way back in season one, I used to say all the time: "this is a very spare art form, there is no plot, there are no special effects" —yeah, one of the ways youtubers make discussions of these issues exciting (ever since The Amazing Atheist) is with over-the-top behavior of this kind. Yes, I've recorded many semi-satirical "belligerent critiques", and if you misinterpret them as deadpan serious "confessional" statements, you'd get a distorted sense of my character.

And, again, THAT'S OKAY.

Off camera, I'd assume The Amazing Atheist is quite a boring person, and you're basically looking at his struggle to not be boring all the time. My book, Future of an Illusion, is NOT BORING, but it is indeed a "belligerent critique" of the vegan movement: the video that was made of one chapter opens with a puppet speaking in Spanish. That's giving life and entertainment value to what could be quite a dull discussion of inherently dull issues —however, I do not speak Spanish and I am not that puppet.

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

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[ahaaya writes:]

Getting here late, but I have a simple test for narcissistic 'intellectuals'. Do they recognize and respect the expertise of others?

How often has he ever mentioned a scholar (professional or otherwise) with respect? How often has he admitted that Person X knows more about Y than he does?

His usual shtick is to mention an Expert (by name or not) and dismiss them, using the word 'idiot' a lot.

Can anyone think of counter-examples of him being positively impressed by.... anyone?

—————

Try watching any of the videos that discuss books I've read (solo or in the company of others).

It is just ridiculous to say (that in my now enormous corpus of work) I never evaluate other authors' writing positively, or that I never appreciate the positive accomplishments of other intellectuals.

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

^ This is an hour-long discussion of a book we both positively appreciated and learned a lot from. Yes, there are a few points of criticism of the book in there, or points of disagreement with the author(s) are pointed out —but there's nothing here that anyone would "clock" as a symptom of NPD (which is, again, a very serious disability with VERY OBVIOUS symptoms… if you've ever met anyone who actually has it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrZ5RwzvthY

^ An hour long discussion of several different authors, all of whom I utterly disagree with, but you'll hear a totally reasonable mix of praise and blame (and positive appreciation for the intellectual contributions of several of the authors to the field, even when I disagree with them personally, etc.).

https://www.youtube.com/live/HjY2RB3T2Fc

^ Fiction instead of non-fiction, this time.

I made a series of videos while I was in Yunnan discussing books and authors that had positively (or at least significantly) influenced my life… if you'd watched any of those videos, they offer a significant counter-balance to your claim that I've never been "positively impressed by anyone".

Re: "His usual shtick is to mention an Expert (by name or not) and dismiss them, using the word 'idiot' a lot."

Yeah, well, if you work in (1) Buddhist philosophy and then (2) vegan activism, you're going to meet a lot of idiots. Even so, one of my most popular videos was discussing the positive aspects of my experience as a scholar of Pali (i.e., Buddhist philosophy, etc.) and expresses appreciation for people I met and knew (and authors whose work I read) in that field. Just yesterday, I made a short video (three minutes long) talking about my positive appreciation for people I met living in Asia, in contrast to the people I met in the U.K. and Canada, talking about the positive qualities they had, even if they weren't brillian or bookish intellectuals.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p4i9DGu3nAs

So, as always with the amateur diagnosis club, (1) your diagnosis doesn't demonstrate much interest in NPD, and (2) your diagnosis doesn't demonstrate much interest in me.

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[LuxeRevival writes:]

LMAO. He is the literal clinical definition of a narc. 🤭

It's why no university wants him in their programs. We've all seen those recorded interviews. They tell him, "He's just too smart." ZED has no self awareness to know that when people tell you that, it means they are politely trying to end the conversation and never deal with you again.

Vegans couldn't stand him and refused to crown him King.

Melissa's parents/ brothers couldn't stand him.

Zed's in in laws couldn't stand him. The interview with his father in law is still up on YouTube. Nonvegans channel from 7 years ago

He can't even make it thru culinary classes without having a problem.

The hospital staff in France, when his daughter was born, were portrayed as "malign," but yet again, insufferable Zed was such a pain in the ass that the staff felt "unsafe"

The neighbors in his old apartment building couldn't stand him, and they let him know on their Facebook group when he came in starting a fight about the community garden

I'm not going on. He encounters issues with people EVERYWHERE HE GOES! We all know EXACTLY what he is.

🖕TRACKSUIT

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Re: "It's why no university wants him in their programs. We've all seen those recorded interviews. They tell him, "He's just too smart." ZED has no self awareness to know that when people tell you that, it means they are politely trying to end the conversation and never deal with you again."

All of this just relies on fabricating evidence: there are many, MANY videos talking about my university experience…

(the good and the bad of it)

…each and every one of which is wildly incompatible with this description, and each and every one of which is incompatible with a diagnosis of NPD (i.e., narcissism per se).

Re: "The hospital staff in France, when his daughter was born, were portrayed as "malign," but yet again, insufferable Zed was such a pain in the ass that the staff felt "unsafe""

These are just lies made up by a random, anonymous person on Reddit… whereas you can read my own writing about what happened at the hospital (i.e., what was saddening and heartbreaking about dealing with the hospital staff, and their attitudes toward my wife at the time)…

but these are also mean-spirited lies, that reflect some condition like narcissism (or worse) on the part of the liar.

I really don't know who could read what I had to say about my experience in that hospital and then turn around to vilify me for in this way. But hey, this is the internet: people have freedom of speech and this is the (frankly evil) use they make of it.

Several doctors and nurses really treated my wife and I like garbage: I do not regret talking about that experience openly, and it may be have been helpful (or meaningful) for a few people to hear about it. However, here on Reddit, you can see how easily a lie can twist that into "evidence" of a mental disability on my part.

It is not true that "…the staff felt "unsafe"…" —I suppose the author has many years of experience with mixing in this sort of "minor lie" to add to the overall defamatory effect of a comment of this kind.

At a time when my wife and I were really vulnerable, doctors and nurses were incredibly cruel and insulting to us, and that is what I provided some commentary on, in retrospect: the day my daughter was born could have been the happiest day of my life —but it wasn't because of the barbarity of these doctors and nurses.

BTW, the exception proves the rule: two nurses were good to us, one male one female, and we really expressed appreciation for them as much as we could. One of them we tried to send a gift to (in the mail) afterward, to express thanks again, but I think the postal service returned it to us, undelivered. So, yes, we did meet some kind and decent people in that hospital system, but the hostility we dealt with was overwhelming.

Re: "The neighbors in his old apartment building couldn't stand him, and they let him know on their Facebook group when he came in starting a fight about the community garden"

Again, this is just a lie about a tempest in a teapot situation that I joked about (in one youtube video and a blog post). Some kids ripped up the grass in the park outside my window, and the other tenants used this as an opportunity to demonstrate their own mental health problems: there was plenty of evidence of real insanity (and cruelty) from the other residents in my apartment building in response to this trivial event… but there's nothing for me to regret in my own contribution to that conversation (that, again, I posted publicly, having a laugh at the absurdity of it all).

Nobody here seems to have the concept that a diagnosis exists to help the patient. This is just a game being played of, "I know you said this in a facebook group, therefore I'm going to assign you to a scientistic-sounding medical category that serves as a substitute for the concept of evil". I dunno… it seems sort of cowardly. Why not openly and directly argue that I'm evil?

"He dared to complain that doctors and nurses in the hospital were cruel to him… THEREFORE he is evil!" Fair enough. If you think morality entails telling the lie that doctors and nurses were kind to you (WHEN THEY WEREN'T) then I'll openly identify with the other side. I'm willing to be honest about things that other people aren't honest about: I'm sure the vast majority of people who have a heartbreaking experience at the hospital (on the day their daughter is born or otherwise) would indeed be afraid to talk about it openly…

…perhaps because of the kind of cruelty you see here, in this very Reddit group.

Saturday, 21 March 2026

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

Friday, 20 March 2026

[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.

Thursday, 19 March 2026

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.