Tweets, tweets, tweets- My favourite tweets by me in the last two months
I write a lot of tweets but have much more of a following on here than Twitter, so I thought it might be nice to share some of my tweets with my blog readers. Some of these were originally tweet threads. Some of these have been fleshed out. I’ve done minimal proofreadng. Anyway, enjoy, and checkout my Twitter page here if you’re interested:
1. One of the tendencies in leftism that irks me is the assumption that either people 'get it', some kind of fundamental leftist truth, or don't. Especially where 'it' is defined as an abstruse systemic critique of capitalism.
In reality, there's no single 'it', there's a vast field of possible knowledge, known to different degrees by different people. To the extent that there's a single 'ur-truth', it's that capitalism is behind a lot of seemingly separate problems, but there are different levels on which this point can be understood. Many people who you'd never expect to understand it. There's no satori moment that separates ordinary people from anti-capitalist enlightenment,
The most diseased manifestation of this is those trot and ML groups that hold that if you don’t buy their exact line, you’re worse than useless- a wet blanket on the working class. History doesn’t move forward by people having exactly the right ideas. History is moved forward by ideas and things bouncing together in a chaotic way. Better thinking is generally better, but it’s not like it’s a quiz, and if you can create a grouplet that scores 100% in the quiz, your grouplet ‘wins’ history.
2. There’s this old tweet that goes around:
“Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones”
I've always thought that it's a bit of a shame that the left accepts, implicitly, that rightwing economic views are less beyond the pale than racism/sexism/homophobia/ableism, etc. Don’t they kill just as many people? Admittedly, I don't see an alternative- there are good reasons why we think this way- but it’s still a bit of a pity in so many ways. it suggests a fundamental disinterest in material reality.
3. Liberalism gets more and more hysterical and puritanical about the application of its symbolic/linguistic/representational methods over time, as it becomes more and more clear that those methods are almost at their maximum limit, yet inequality remains. Faced with the recognition that symbols alone are limited, liberals can either abandon symbols or engage in symbolic warfare and scolding even harder- guess how most are going to react to that?
The above point is maybe linked to an observation that a Trotskyist friend made to me: if we ever transition to socialism, the people who insist on still being involved in politics and political decision-making will be the most insufferable sorts you can imagine.
4. One of my first crushes was a muscular football player dude with an enormous face, broad head, immaculate bone structure, and zero neck. I called him Charlie No Neck.
5. The thing about TERFs and other kinds of anti-trans campaigners is that they think about other people's gender in a very sexual and very public way. I think sometimes the concept of objectification is overused or vague, but here it makes perfect sense- taking part of someone's identity and making it part of a sexual horror anti-fantasy.
[In the original tweet I included, here, a screenshot of a tweet worrying about trans women in a very sexual way- specifically an image of being coerced into “choking on girldick”. Because I generally don’t believe in public attacks I’ve omitted the image here.]
Sometimes I think about other people's gender through a sexual lens- getting off on how manly a dommy daddy is or how or how soft and cute a pretty guy is *but I generally keep this in my own head. because that's polite*. Unless I'm in a situation where it would be appropriate. There is no law saying it's illegal to refuse to have sex with someone because they have a dick. No such law has been proposed. Thus lurid fantasies like this can be seen as sexual anti-fantasies- a kind of roleplaying expression of what your sexuality is not. People affirm aspects of what their sexuality is and isn't by talking about fantasies and anti-fantasies all the time, but can we leave trans women, Who are real flesh and blood people out of it? If you don't want to have sex with them, fine. Just don't. You don't need to engage publicly in horror fantasies about being pressured into it.
6. Can anyone explain this? I find it extremely surprising and maybe even the opposite of what I would have expected. Is it looking at the wage growth of individuals rather than the category? Because that would make sense, but it should be spelt out.
7. The general principle in consumer law that companies can basically choose who they do business with needs to be reexamined, it doesn't make sense in the age of tech monopolies (and other kinds of monopolies)
8. There are maybe ten people in the whole world who genuinely believe in free speech for all sides on all matters. I'd be surprised if any of them are conservative, as exemplified by the various conservative calls to sack, crucify, etc. critics of the queen in the aftermath of her death. There are so many screenshots of people complaining about cancel culture, say, in relation to race, then calling for individuals to be sacked for critical comments about the queen.
9. When you combine the titles of "love will tear us apart" and "love will keep us alive" you get horrifying possibilities.
10. If you don't love prisoners, the homeless, refugees, and all those others you're allowed to hate, you don’t love humans in general or ‘as such’ because you don’t regard being human as a sufficient basis for love.
11. I find the politics of representation tiresome, but I will say I'm generally pro-race blind casting. My hot take is that if Shakespearean England could tolerate cross-gender casting (all men, regardless of character gender), we can put up with cross-racial casting.
12. I read through a bunch of right-wingers fantasizing about what they'd do if they encountered aliens on Twitter- a bunch of WH 40k memes etc. Jokes aside, I guarantee 100% that if we encountered alien life these particular right-wingers would hate it immediately. Who the wants live like that- so afraid of the unknown?
13. Evangelicals’ responses to various questions. H/T to Jacob Huneycutt:
There might, possibly, be some wiggle room in terms of traditional Christianity on original sin [the Baptists are pretty tight scripturalists, and do manage to debate the matter], but the divinity of Christ is absolutely central to Christianity and pretty clearly spelled out in the bible. These evangelicals then, are not, in the strictest sense, a movement of Christians. They are a movement on for conservative social values, some, but not all, members of which are Christian.
The biblical case for the divinity of Christ is pretty undeniable. On the other hand, there’s no clear biblical case against abortion, and some have made a biblical case for abortion, e.g.:
“If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
Implying that causing an abortion- even an involuntary abortion- is not to be treated as murder, but instead is only a matter of compensation. Admittedly, abortion is debatable in biblical terms, and I’m not saying the bible is a clearly pro-abortion document- but compared to the divinity of Christ???
And again, in the case of premarital sex: While there is a clear biblical case against sex outside of marriage, again, it’s nowhere near as strong as the case for Christ’s divinity. These results as a whole are a smoking gun showing that at least for many of these people, conservatism leads them to their religious positions, not their religious positions to conservatism.
14. Be honest, do you feel in your heart of hearts that if magic were real, you would have it- like would you be a jedi if jedi were real etc etc?
15.
(By Haus of Decline)
16. The unforgivable sin of the Disney Star Wars films happens in the Force Awakens when they decide to recap the plot of a New Hope. There's nothing wrong with Rey, or 'forced diversity' or whatever other bullshit the neckbeards attack- the problem is lack of creative courage. Any further analysis would almost certainly be superfluous or amount to looking for something deeper than is to be found. It sucks because it’s repetitive and therefore creatively flat.
17. I feel like we're permanently caught between people who don't believe the world and morality are complex, on the one hand, and people who want to use "complexity" as an excuse to never say anything or criticize the powerful, on the other.
18.
Leave aside the issue of kids getting too much screen time (no doubt we all do) and leave aside that this tweet is controlling. When I see this stuff my first thought is that even if screen culture is unhealthy, isolating your kids from the dominant youth culture is worse, even if that culture is bad.
Go read through the Amazon bestsellers list and then compare it with the most popular stuff on Netflix right now. Any perception that reading is an inherently more intellectual pursuit than television is coasting on rapidly diminishing cachet.
If a referendum were introduced to torture to death the most despised criminals on live television, at a minimum 20% of the population would support it if there was a competent pro-campaign. Probably 30%. Maybe this is obvious, but really think through the implications.
So much of the trad obsession with realistic art is just about finding bonerfuel, especially since they’re trying to avoid porn. All those diaphanous gowns and women coming out of the sea, and for the differently inclined there are (sometimes literally) Herculean men.
It's often said that how you treat the weakest is the best judge of your character. This is close to right, but not quite. The best judge of your character is how you treat those who society permits and encourages you to hurt and despise- the most notable example is criminals.
As a self-deprecating guy, I find the (particularly American) prejudice against self-deprecation on Twitter [e.g. “stop telling on yourself”] horrid. Leave me to insincerely snipe at myself in peace.
Was thinking of writing the world's worst tweet thread where I say something like: "It's so funny to see so many yt artists complain about losing work to AI when all yt artists ever do is steal from bipoc artists… So, yeah, that’s happening.”
There's an argument that meme stocks, bitcoin etc.- stuff that's effectively a pyramid scheme- functions as a kind of spontaneously organized, publicly run lottery. A mass, unconscious circumvention of gambling laws. You know those science videos that are like "flocks form in formation by individuals following these very simple rules". Meme stocks are like humans doing that, except instead of formations, they're doing it for making a lotto. That’s bad enough, but when rich people manipulate it, it’s just tragic.
Watching transformers (the movie, not the machine learning technique). Seems pro-army and intelligence, but vaguely (only vaguely) anti-police? This is funny because that's the exact direction liberal politics has been drifting since it came out, and it came out a while ago now.
The Philosophy Bear
Sometimes I get a form of imposter syndrome (yes I know, inspid phrase) where I worry that I haven't even got others fooled. Everyone is, at best, bemused and at worst amused by my incompetence, and I only haven't been ejected because it would be awkard.
The layers of ideology, of self-deception, of petty and grand malice, of cruelty, of a deliberate, self-deified ignorance that are necessary to convince yourself the homeless are "selfish" even as you burn their meagre homes out of fear and greed about property prices- staggering. I have nothing particularly interesting to say about this except that it is an astonishing artifact of evil on a scale that shouldn’t even be possible.
Someone once told me that men are unrealistic about sex and romance insomuch as they want a woman who is super sexual but only for them, and women are unrealistic about sex and romance insomuch as they want to be approached and courted, but only by people they want to approach them and court them. Regardless of whether or not this story is true, I think it captures in some sense the ur myth of the tragedy of heterosexuality- this is the sad story many heterosexuals tell about heterosexuality. From the outside, I find heterosexuality fascinating because I don’t really understand wanting either of those things.
The terrifying thing about AI art is that it's A) the first enjoyable and fulfilling thing, the first thing that makes us human, B) that can be done as a job C) to be automated.
My favourite trope is when the villian and the hero are fighting one on one, and their armies are fighting at the same time, but it's very obvious that only the hero v villain fight truly matters, because both the hero and villain could defeat an unlimited number of enemy mooks. So if the hero won, but the villain's army won, the hero would just mop up the villain's army and vice versa. The larger battle is just a reflection of their duel, and their duel in turn is just a reflection of a deeper conflict between ideas in a Platonic realm.
AI generated logos, some clearly professional grade:
34. They're a couple. They've got a joke about saving for a house but they know it can't happen it's clear they're in love because the joke's so bad. The little one has an insta page with 30 active followers. Sometimes the bigguy makes fake accounts just to like his boyfriend's pics
Sometimes the big one carries the small one and pretends to be a pillaging Viking, initially as a joke, but now as a semiunironic sex thing. The little guy is still nervous around the big guy's mother, but she loves him and sees him as part of the family. The big guy keeps taking anabolic steroids because he thinks the little guy will leave him if he isn't buff- he still can't believe his luck in hooking up with LG- just like LG can't believe his luck in hooking up with BG. BG will die at 58 of a steroid heart attack, but happier than most. LG never quite loved BG as much as BG loved him, though it was close. After BG is gone he'll find another boyfriend, a twinkish forty-something, but it won't be the same. He'll often feel like, as a way of coping with his grief at losing BG, he tried to become BG for someone else.
35. It's funny that 'laughing at your own jokes' is a universally accepted idiom for cringe vanity because in my experience, it's something almost everyone does. Most of the exceptions I know are comedians and comedians are vain af.
36. All the stuff like this image is built on the premise that there are more people who need to be told to be more selfish than people who need to be told to be less selfish and, buddy, I wish that were the case but I don't see the evidence. So why is this stuff more prevalent? This stuff is more prevalent because it makes people feel good. This is extremely dangerous! All wisdom literature, sayings, artworks etc. is selected on the basis of making people feel good, not on the basis of being true.
37. One area where I think people have wildly differing views but don't yet realise it is "The propriety of asking a coworker (who isn't a subordinate) on a date". This is just waiting for the right triggering event to become the new Age Gaps or Cultural Appropriation discourse. My view is that so long as you're respectful about it, you've got a right to shoot your shot, but many disagree and will make arguments like "people will feel obligated to say yes because refusing someone you see everyday and can't avoid seeing is awkward".
38. There's a certain kind of doctor/allied health professional who sees writing sick notes and disability pension applications etc. as beneath them and tries to get out of it. I've seen it as an admin staff member. I find this attitude contemptible. Malnutrition is a critical threat to health.
39. People: AI isn't capable of genuine creativity, it just combines ideas and images from its training set David Hume:
40. This dude should be going places. He's really fucking good. Forty people have heard of him. If you want to find hidden gold, here's my tip, Jeremee Bautista
41.
42. Last night I listened Brace Belden talk about the Black Hammer organization, and the morals he drew from it. He drew this lesson: "be normal and you're less likely to end up here". It occurred to me that "be nice and kind" would have worked as well But then I started thinking about various political disasters on the left and lessons pe.ople had drawn from them over the years, and it seemed to me that *a lot* of the problems people had run into would have been avoided by people being kind. For example, online pileups have happened many times in a disastrous way against innocent or more or less innocent people. People have drawn all sorts of lessons from this about how to behave to avoid the problem but a simple strategy "be nice" would have avoided them all. Now people will object that it's really hard to be nice. This is true. But is it any harder than being normal? Or meticulously researching pile ins before you join? I dunno. I'm no saint myself, but I feel like normalcy is even further away from where I am now than compassion.
43. Guy who is completely normal, but has an inexplicable, unshakeable belief that Leonard Cohen died a virgin.
44. Many others have said it, but let me repeat it. If you want to make enormous burgers (and honestly, I don’t really see the point) you should at least do it properly, by making them wider, not taller.
The burger tweet is absolutely on point and I don’t know how so many burger companies have completely failed at this