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apriorion

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Everything posted by apriorion

  1. apriorion
    Meanwhile, my colleagues at a nearby university who also teach logic, critical reasoning, and ethics (not to mention the stuff that is actually more important to me personally but that I can understand why most people don't get--metaphysics, epistemology, etc.) are under threat of being cut: http://dailynous.com/2020/06/30/philosophy-illinois-wesleyan-threatened/#comment-408735 Please sign this petition if you also find this move by the board at IWU troubling. Thanks. EDIT: petition: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/837/485/767/stop-the-destruction-of-the-iwu-philosophy-department/#published
  2. apriorion
    Thanks. I was just reminding myself of this doozy from about a year ago: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741737426/in-tweet-trump-tells-congresswomen-to-go-back-where-they-came-from How easy it is to forget, with the constant flood of chaos. I was stunned with that one last summer.
  3. apriorion
    Don't know about all this China stuff. I came here to see what you guys have been thinking about this movement lately. I must say, I stumbled upon some old Jon Stewart clips from 2014 and I was surprised how much what they were talking about then still applies today. Then I was surprised that I was surprised.
  4. apriorion
    As a former Floridian, I can attest that living there is akin to being dumped in a swamp.
  5. apriorion
    Seriously, so fucking good. I love how it's playful at just the right times, in between all the amazing tunes. One year on, this Warp30xNTS thing still gets me excited to revisit these sets and the box (I know that there are mixed feelings about that, but I love it). I hadn't looked forward to something like that in so damn long, it felt like a seasonally inverted Christmas.
  6. apriorion
    Fuckin' gorgeous. Instabought.
  7. apriorion
    So many great tunes, hard to pin one down, but this is certainly my all-round go-to/most played. It's a very powerful and sacred track for me, so the screenshot I'm going to post below might seem like I take it lightly, but I don't. Still: Of course my favorite track by my favorite band came to mind when this happened in the show.
  8. apriorion
    God damn this album only becomes more and more prescient. In b4 the whole world catches up w/"reach for the dead" video.
  9. apriorion
    It's so obvious that in the video the guy couldn't breathe. Whether there were "underlying conditions" is irrelevant because the way he was pinned was completely unnecessary, and he asked for helped and expressed his difficulty breathing given the position he was in. Also, in general, I think we should accept that if you're holding someone down by putting your knee on that handcuffed person's neck, you're a fucking creep.
  10. apriorion
    What in the horrifying fuck?!
  11. apriorion
    My god. If true, then Twoism has become a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that wished it could become a real thread. I haven't been there for years because I got to the point where I cringed before I typed the URL into my browser and I determined "why would I go to a place that pains me so much?" I can't imagine how the BOC fellows themselves must feel, especially if they think that place is representative of their fanbase. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I totally get why BOC don't interact with their fans--I wouldn't. Except you guys--you guys are the greatest, relative to the BOC fans.
  12. apriorion
  13. apriorion
    As someone who was also bequeathed a stupid legal name without his consent, I can attest that it's not all that bad. But honestly, that kid was going to have a fucked up life regardless. Hopefully he does something cool with it.
  14. apriorion
    I think we always have reason to be wary about giving power to governments, especially in times of crisis. PATRIOT Act, anyone? I remember how fucking ridiculously high Bush's approval ratings were right after 11 September 2001, even though he was just as fucking stupid as he ever was. And then Congress passed that fucking steaming shitpile on our liberties, and everyone grabbed a fork and started scooping some right down their own throats because it was called "PATRIOT": what kinda Arab terrorist are you that you would question our president? (I have a dark complexion; I heard variations on this a lot at that time.) That said, the lockdown thing here is a bit different. I don't know of too many arrests in my area, but maybe I'm wrong. While there's a paternalistic element to this whole thing (we're being told rather forcefully what to do because we're too dumb/selfish to do it the right way on our own), I honestly wonder about paternalism for exactly these kinds of things. Maybe people (or enough people) are too dumb, and they're not just killing themselves with their recklessness--they're killing their grandmas and their neighbor's sickly cousins, some of whom know the risks and don't want to die, but are getting trampled asunder, nevertheless. So I'm honestly torn on this issue. Here's the thing: we need to be vigilant that once a vaccine is readily available, we haven't given over any more liberties than we had pre-December 2019. I have my doubts that we can pull this off, just because history shows time and again that something like this happens, and we then have slightly fewer liberties than we had to start with. I feel like the social contract is really more like an agreement with a casino that we had no choice about entering: you walk in with a certain amount, but they ensure that you'll very nearly certainly walk out with less.
  15. apriorion
    Man, people are so predictable. I told all my friends about two months ago that this is exactly how things would play out. Level-headed medical professionals would urge us to "flatten the curve", people will collectively give it a shot, conspiracy theories about the man-madeness of the thing would rise (to the point where cabinet officials would promote that stupidity on national television--Pompeo, e.g.), people would get restless and many of them would direct their anxieties on governments/medical professionals/intellectuals, large groups would go out in protests and public gatherings in parks and beaches, they would start demanding reopening. This will continue to get stupider. People have no patience, and cause-and-effect reasoning is difficult when you don't immediately see the cause of the effect. Not being able to see the virus, its airborne qualities, the slight delay of the incubation period: all of these things make it hard for people to be patient. Also, we're talking about something--while 10x or so more dangerous than the flu--is still relatively low on the deadliness scale for the average fuck to care about. These factors taken together make the whole scenario rather predictable. If the death rates were higher, or if the infection were instantaneous and uniform in its symptoms, I would expect more patience for the lockdowns (although I would expect the conspiracy nuts would ramp up their efforts). But with this, it's just nebulous enough to confound the simple-minded public. Putting things in perspective, these people don't represent the majority, sure. But they represent a sizable enough minority (in the U.S. at least) to elect the most ridiculous living embodiment of that '80s businessman from Futurama as president. My point is, if I wanted an easy win in a game of Go, I'd just play against the collective stupidity of these people.
  16. apriorion
    Let's define "warp quality", shall we? As much of a warp fanboy as I might be, I feel a duty to be honest to myself and look at the majority of their output in the last 15-ish years. Certainly, they hit it out of the park more than any other label I follow loyally, but they also strike out more than they used to. I won't name names, but we can all easily remember some of their recent signings and the albums we cringed and asked "why, warp?" Clark's materials bests most of those, just my feeling on the matter.
  17. apriorion
    Aren't Corona and Modelo produced by the same people? They are basically the same beer, no? I wouldn't at all be surprised if it turned out they were. But I'm at least pretty sure they come from the same distributor.
  18. apriorion
  19. apriorion
    Man, thinking about this album and "Substrata" also reminded me of how, around the same time I was inhabiting the worlds created by these albums, I spent WAAAYYY too much money on an imported copy of Reload's "A Collection of Short Stories". For me at that time, it was worth it, but it sure was a lot of money which I didn't really have then. Gonna add that to my nostalgia list today.
  20. apriorion
    Oh, nice--thanks for the heads up on this. This album and Biosphere's "Substrata" got me through many long nights at the office in my first year of grad school. I'm going to revisit them both today.
  21. apriorion
    Ah, there's the sober-minded detail I was hoping for! Thanks, chenGOD. But I would say, bank bailouts belong to one class (and T.O.ed Vic alluded to that in his angry yelling), but what about the wealthy in general? And wealthy companies, in particular? Also, even if we agree that "too big to fail" is, to some extent, and accurate description of some banks, couldn't we still insist on mitigating those obscene profits like the ones from 2018? Or am I in socialist lala-land?
  22. apriorion
    Geez, what he's saying sounds so simple, and I'm afraid that there's got to be a counterargument that I'm not seeing yet. What would it really take for there to be reforms to ensure this sort of thing? Widening and extremely unjust economic disparities made up the thrust of Bernie's appeal on the campaign trail, but he ultimately didn't catch on, or didn't catch on enough, at least. I don't know if Bernie or any Bernie followers would have endorsed simple measurements like Ticked-off Vic here is recommending, but maybe that was the problem? Perhaps Bernie's desires were too extravaggant? Perhaps Ticked-off Vic's plans are more plausible? I don't know. I think I'm just too tired to think straight atm. Edit: I really need to re-learn how to proofread posts before I hit "post".
  23. apriorion
    I am particularly bothered by his point about the bailouts—“rinse, lather, repeat”—and how he points out that the very wealthy and the large corporations should bear more responsibility for saving for a rainy day. It strikes me as so reasonable, I wonder if I’m missing something?
  24. apriorion
    In the full video, he continues with a few more utterly reasonable points, albeit somewhat angrily stated:
  25. apriorion
    No major disagreements here. I just want to point out that, with their contribution to the NTS Warp 30 celebration almost a year ago (WTF!!! a year already?!), BOC haven't left the music world. That's all. As you said, they have their own geologic timescale, like from the point of view of Sagan's cosmic calendar, it's all recent enough.
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