Ingrid

Wings of Desire is one of the better films made by a writer and director that are wholly politically and ethically compromised in a manner typical of the Federal Republic

relatable

An Iran under Pahlavi that signs a normalization deal with Israel will just be another Egypt, in all likelihood less dynamic than Egypt

in case anyone ever needed confirmation that it's not about building a democratic Iran, it's about collapsing Iran and turning it into a land of rubble that can be bombed every six months

I recall teaching ethics and asking students to grapple with the problem of torture using any of the three ethical theories always presented in these courses. Almost all of them justified it, and used utilitarianism to do so

anyway, I said 'distorted.' What are they distorted by? at least in part, the need to teach those topics to large classes of undergraduates who are not philosophy students

there was an entire lecture devoted to defending Mill on India and I was just thinking, what are we doing here. and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Mill's liberal-imperial vision

if we're going to the level of anecdote, I recall a political philosophy course I took as an undergrad in an analytic department that was centred on cold war liberalism and its antecedents, shepherding one from Mill to Rawls without looking outside

also like much of the issue are things like the Popper controversy and later the 'science wars'

I think the Reisch thesis is generally right, I also think ethics and politics as part of mainstream departments are often rather distorted (the review makes fun of people complaining about the trolley problem and 'AI' research's connection to academic philosophy, but in my view that's symptomatic)

like on the one hand, it's very good to say 'don't dismiss the socialism of the vienna circle,' on the other are you really serious with bhl as a symbol of contemporary continental philosophy

I mean I admire its reconstruction of the politics of radical analytics, because that is something that is often swept away by various parties

There are very talented mentally ill alcoholics using rateyourmusic lists as personal literary vehicles.

don’t have any feeling about Schuringa’s book, which I’ve really only heard about, but worth noting that this review of the book performs the exact kind of bad faith caricature of which it accuses Schuringa (all continentals painted with a Heideggerian brush, etc.)

It feels like the 19th century in here. If a person wants to gamble it should have to be on a horse imo

Went to some stand up comedy tonight. I have developed a new rule of American stand-up that I am increasingly sure is 100% accurate: anybody who makes jokes about dating apps or sex is going to be utterly awful, and on any given night, that will be half the set. The other half will be great

like venezuela, this is yet another thing trump would not have done, would never have done, if he were actually a russian asset. but that doesn't stop the theorizing.

all these Dems who are prefacing their statements with “iran should never have a nuclear weapon” would absolutely laugh in your face if you suggested omnilateral decommission

Kipling, after the death of his son, speaking in the voice of the Kaiser, his doctor, & an observer

INDOPACOPE

Russia’s first to bring up the invasion of Iraq today. It’s to the US’s great shame that there’s ever space for Russia to try and claim the moral high ground in this chamber while it’s enabled mass Syrian death and continued its assault on Ukraine

Bari Weiss C @bariweiss X.com S CBS News 7 @CBSNews • 48m "Mr. Mamdani, you are more than welcome to come to one of my safe houses." Masih Alinejad, who was targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime at her Brooklyn home, responded to a statement released by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani that today's military strikes on Iran Show more THAOrYAYIDANS SATEMENT ...They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace...

we all knew Bari Weiss was a deranged right wing hack but I thought that she’d at least be a little more subtle about it while running cbs news

Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library | Timeless Library conservators recently made a startling discovery in a batch of decaying film reels -- a long-lost 1897 film by early cinema icon George Méliès. The French magician-turned-filmmaker's

"The 45-second film, made around 1897, was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot"

HELL. YES.

screenshot of Manhanote Clockwise line on the PC game Subway Builder

screenshot of Manhanote Counter-Clockwise line on the PC game Subway Builder

had a vision and stayed up late into the night to realize it: Manhattan Yamanote Line. Manhanote Line

Fitting that in America’s final form, the epicenter of evil will be a private golf resort for wealthy pedophiles.

The goal *is* the wasteland-ification of much of MENA so that Israel and the Emirates can rule over rubble.

Those who speculate that without IRI the US will finally clamp down on Israel's transgressions in other arenas are deluded beyond comprehension. If one takes the likes of Blinken, Lew, Hochstein and McGurk at their word, which their word is nearly identical to that of Kushner, this will not happen.

Iran, while authoritarian, is not a strongman dictatorship. It has an elected parliament that is not a duma; it has an elected president; the clerical leader is elected by a specialized body. Decapitation is unlikely to bring it down