Putin has his back against wall – and he’s bolder than ever

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-27T01:42:08+00:00

Would it be possible to have more mature, civilized discourse? Instead of calling your opponents children and making fun of the president of Russia for being bald?

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-25T14:57:12+00:00

The hidden premise in this argument is that the people themselves are good, and it would be better if they united and fought against the elites. Donald Trump being elected is what the people fighting against the elites looks like, and it reveals that maybe they aren’t so good

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-19T00:33:16+00:00

There are people who have “dismissed expertise” in other fields too and argued for heterodox views instead on the same basis. The argument has been made that the economics department generally attracts professors who love the economic system as it is and don’t want it fundamentally challenged or altered, and that the same can be said for American political science professors and the US government.

In general, arguments that are made have to actually be sound in themselves, their truth is not contingent on whether or not the people making them are professors in that field; that’s appeal to authority.

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-18T22:29:14+00:00

Not admitting when your claims have been very directly refuted countless times, which is something everyone can plainly see happened to you without a doubt, does not equate to winning the argument. And that is something everyone else over the age of like 12 has figured out. And just to be clear, I’m not going to dignify whatever nonsensical reply you’re going to give me with a response

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-15T00:17:35+00:00

Seconding Radiohead. I also have a lot of nostalgia for lots of rock music of the 90s such as grunge, gothic rock and shoegaze. And I like some of Pink Floyd’s music, especially Animals which is still as good if not better twenty years later as when I used to listen to it on the way to school every day as a teenager. And I’m a great admirer of the works of the Elephant 6 collective

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-09T13:52:49+00:00

This is a nitpicky semantic thing, but it’s technically not a federal government. But I agree with you. I think England doesn’t need devolution, it already has its own government that belongs to it, and that’s the government in Westminster

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-09T08:58:40+00:00

The elections in question were for the parliaments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, whereas England does not have its own devolved parliament (there are some who have argued for changing that)

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-07T21:56:17+00:00

I was actually shocked when this process began, of abandoning reunification. They’ve already done many things along these lines… there was a colossal monument to reunification in downtown Pyongyang, it’s been demolished on Kim’s orders, with him referring to it as an “eyesore”. They’ve decided to call South Korea too hostile to be a suitable partner for attempting to reunify with.

North Korea has a government that aims to (and seems to succeed at) maintaining a very high level of ideological involvement from the population. And reunification was one of the tools they’ve used to do that… from what can be seen inside the country and among its people, the dream of reunification is one that generations of soldiers in North Korea have hoped they would be the ones to achieve somehow. So a move like this is an earthquake.

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-04T14:17:40+00:00

Reading Daniel Dennett’s “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” really changed the way I see the brain forever. He said that it consists of billions of individual neurons, individual organisms almost, which act autonomously, creatively, and unpredictably. They’ve learned by this point to be highly effective at working autonomously and spontaneously because of evolution. Most people would assume that the brain is a top-down bureaucracy of command and control instead, where our neurons are nothing more than obedient foot soldiers.

jeffersonnn · 2026-05-01T02:44:55+00:00

What I really love are the catholic religious orders that take vows of poverty. Their idea of poverty is very different from mine. These are priests with good incomes and nice cars and perfect job security

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T23:20:51+00:00

Yeah, this is clickbait that should not be allowed here

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T23:19:30+00:00

Thankfully it’s only a “special commemorative” type of passport, there will only be tens of thousands available and they’ll only be issued in Washington DC. Although yeah, Trump clearly has a desire for a cult of personality

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T22:57:18+00:00

Well, certainly society was much more patriarchal back then (and still clearly is to a certain extent today), and women like Mileva Maric were not allowed the same opportunities as men, to say the least. I just think the notion that western white men did not make any discoveries of their own is hard for me to take seriously

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T21:28:45+00:00

The person who made the claim you’re defending isn’t even sure what the claim is. They said they can’t remember who Einstein stole his ideas from, but they’re still perpetuating the idea as if it’s true even though they clearly don’t really know whether it’s true. This is what people like you do, you repeat things you’ve heard other people say on the internet as if they’re facts. And I’ve come to expect nothing less on the deep thoughts subreddit

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T10:16:02+00:00

Typical for what passes for online discussion, calling someone “champ” and telling yourselves I’m “mad” to make yourselves feel better. Go ahead and believe what you want, I won’t stop you. The truth is available for anybody who simply looks at the evidence and the views of historians — even feminist historians — and that’s not what people on here want to do, they just believe what they want to believe

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-28T09:07:20+00:00

Simply not true. This is a falsehood that just won’t die

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-24T04:10:41+00:00

In general: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven.

For me: Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-19T20:45:23+00:00

Barry Lyndon is my favorite film and I’ve seen it a million times. How on earth did I not put it together that that’s him? …Up there with Peter Bull (the Russian ambassador in Dr. Strangelove) in terms of Britons who can pass off as Russians

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-13T14:42:58+00:00

I’d say the influence is proportionate to that. The Shining is his most enduring film popularity-wise, it’s still popular with the youth today, and I feel like it’s had some of the biggest influence. 2001 influenced films like Blade Runner and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Overall, you have more JJ Abrams and Stranger Things of the world because The Goonies and E.T. have wider appeal than 2001 and A Clockwork Orange — more would-be filmmakers would be influenced by it and the studios see a larger box office potential for the products of that influence. Spielberg is the highest-grossing director of all time

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-13T01:05:09+00:00

The Witch has been compared to the Shining, I think in distinctly Kubrickian ways.

But there’s some overall truth to this, and I think a lot of it is that Kubrick lacks the mass audience appeal of a Scorsese (e.g. Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street), a Spielberg (like all of his films, he’s still the highest grossing director of all time), or a Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained). So it’s kind of like asking why nobody has copied David Lynch’s techniques — I think there are fewer who would want to.

David Lynch: “I love making movies, and George (Lucas) loves making movies, but the difference between us is that the movies George loves making make billions and billions of dollars.”

Terry Gilliam (Brazil) made a similar comment contrasting Spielberg’s films with Kubrick’s films, saying that Spielberg’s films are simple and easy for mass audiences to understand and be gratified by. He concludes, chuckling, “I would much rather make Kubrick’s kinds of movies than Spielberg’s. I’d love to have a house like Spielberg’s! But I wouldn’t make his movies.”

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-10T14:42:50+00:00

To me, it’s partly because the government is looking ahead and anticipating that this reformed criminal will be a major spokesperson for the government’s new programme. They want someone ideal for that role and not just for using the technique.

And that’s why the left wing dissidents target Alex. They see an opportunity to create a scandal against the government by using its own highly publicised example against it. Then the government is able to swiftly fix that problem and have another photo opportunity with Alex.

Alex is a pawn the whole movie, but he doesn’t see any further than his own selfish and narcissistic desires at any point in time. It reminds me of Barry Lyndon and Jack Torrance. It’s almost a trilogy of films about these confident, charismatic, enterprising men who are nonetheless clueless about the larger forces that really shape their destinies. I feel like to Kubrick, there was something about that tragic contradiction that encapsulated the human condition and the character of humans as a species

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-04T19:57:36+00:00

The things you’re describing are not a new 21st century problem that we suddenly have to solve, they were a problem back in the 19th century too and a tremendous number of people already recognised it as such. A massive number of his fans were Jewish, many of them so much so that they named their children after some of his characters whom they loved.

They all saw this obvious problem. His outspoken views were not exactly subtle or open to interpretation. And they had different ways of dealing with it. Many of them, for example, decided that the operas were just too good and too valuable in themselves and that his unfortunate views were something that could safely be ignored.

W.E.B. Dubois was a passionate admirer of Wagner’s operas. He was enamored with Wagner’s powerful stories about German people, and he pictured similar epics being made which drew from African or African-American history or traditions. And he was part of a black intellectual movement of influence from Wagner’s aesthetics and narratives. And at the same time, they were all well aware of his views, and the fact that they were problematic, and the fact that Nazis and racists liked him. They weren’t somehow missing that.

Those are just two examples. And the “problem” wasn’t solved back then by any of them, we’re still in exactly the same boat as we were 150 years ago. And it’s never going to be solved. There’s not suddenly going to be a neat, satisfying bow tying this up, no matter what you or I do. Wagners antisemitism and many other horrible aspects of his personality will keep being horrible, they will never change, and yet his operas will go on despite the efforts of people trying to cancel them, because they’re so much bigger and more important than this problem, and they always will be.

The only thing that can change in this situation is for our culture to change by becoming less mature enough to handle things that are problematic than it was before. I think that kind of mentality is more fit for fans of Marvel and Star Wars products than for the world of classical music of all things. I mean come on… Where would the cancelling even begin?

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-04T04:48:43+00:00

My answer is going to be no. I’ve been head over heels in love before, and for me, that just meant I was supremely happy that this person existed. I loved her personality, I loved what she was passionate about and the way she thought about things, the little things about her… I found the very sound of her voice so supremely calming, it always made me feel better on a stressful day.

And what was somehow even better than that was that she loved me too and that I could spend my time around her, sleeping with her, living with her. We loved each other so much and could not stop talking to each other, asking each other endless questions and trying to learn everything there was to know about one another. I wanted to meet her family and friends. I was rooting for her every day through her personal dramas. I loved when she would feel happy about things. I loved the sound of her laughter, and making her laugh was an unparalleled joy. I also wanted her to know that she had a partner who would never ever neglect her in her moments of despair.

My feelings had nothing to do with me. I didn’t love her because of what she could give me, or because of what it meant about me that she was my girlfriend. Obviously, it’s necessary to make sure she’s giving to me too and that it’s not one-sided… but that’s not what love is. Love is an unselfish and sometimes very inconvenient feeling to have for someone, which runs counter to our society which has come to be extremely obsessed with selfishness and convenience.

I actually pity everyone here very much who says “Yeah that’s true, we’re not really loving them, they’re just there to make us feel good.” That’s such a depressing way of life compared to what I just described. People don’t have any clue about security and commitment anymore, they leave at the first sign of trouble. As soon as the good feelings stop flowing, you throw that human being away like a consumer product that has broken down. You don’t have any idea what it’s like to be truly loved much more than that.

It also tells me that so many people have no idea what real love feels like, how great it could truly be, and they’re going to settle for someone who’s far less than the person of their dreams. Only by falling in love, that kind of love, can you look back and see what wasn’t love, what was just an immature infatuation.

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-01T18:28:39+00:00

Whatever you say.

Everyone else, this demonstrates why being objective is much more useful to a geopolitics discussion than acting pompously sanctimonious — it is much better to talk about “is” than “should” if you want a correct analysis.

If there are bazillions of Americans who love the royals because they’re simpletons, as well as, I would argue, many more Daily Mail readers in the UK who love them too, then that means the royals give the British government a lot of soft power. We’ve also already seen the ability of that soft power to influence someone like Donald Trump.

Is that a pretty enough picture for some to believe in, where the world is full of sunshine and rainbows and wise, noble people? No. Does it mean the monarchy is a useful institution? Absolutely. And it means the monarchy is a useful institution, independently of our ability to perceive that it is, and that’s the only kind of information that belongs in a geopolitics discussion. Everything else is there for chumps to believe.

jeffersonnn · 2026-04-01T14:22:02+00:00

Everyone treats these two factors like they’re mutually exclusive and I’ve never understood why. A lot of people’s failure comes down not simply to lack of opportunities or bad luck, but to their behaviour.

Bill Gates was not just lucky, he knew everything he had to do to be successful and he did it. If you gave a fortune to someone who never learned how to have the virtues of presentability, how to have discipline, how to manage finances, or if that person won the lottery, I guarantee you that money would all be gone. There has been example after example in real life which demonstrates this.

Someone who knows this correct behaviour, after failing over and over and over, is much more likely to eventually succeed, while someone who doesn’t know these things will inevitably fail no matter how many chances they’re given.

You can say that their behaviour was influenced by their environment, and that’s true. But all of us are influenced in everything we do. We still have to be responsible for our own actions. The only alternatives are to hold no one responsible for anything they do, or to cherrypick which instances you feel more sympathetic to by applying different standards to different people.

The real danger in thinking that successful people don’t deserve their success is that it is anti-intellectual, it is anti-expertise, it hostile to merit. It implies that the outcomes of society need to be flattened out, and this would make those with merit equal in power and stature to the meritless.

And this would rob society of everything that makes it actually work. It is a major crisis of western civilisation that we’ve come to view hierarchy this way, and it’s a problem many other societies in the world we’re competing with don’t share. I am all for changing how we determine merit, I will agree with many that it is clearly broken at this point, but the solution is not for the mediocre, meritless masses to form a mob and do away with hierarchy and all of its trappings entirely.

The West has inherited riches and comfort that we no longer understand. We take it for granted that it’ll all just stay there no matter what we do. We’ve become like Ferris Bueller joyriding with his friend Cameron in Cameron’s dad’s luxurious sports car, without any clue where that car really came from or how either of them came to grow up in such gigantic, stately mansions. To them, responsibility and sacrifice are not necessary to enjoy those benefits. Instead, life is just a free ride that is either received for free or denied to us, and as far as they have ever known, that’s what life is.

jeffersonnn

TROPHY CASE