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link roundup 14

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i think i forgot to mention, i graduated with a BA in history last month. i have some truly excellent links this week, though:

reading

As the LTTE grew from a guerilla movement into a quasi-conventional army, they built up a naval capability as the Sea Tigers (கடற்புலிகள்). This was strategically vital as the Tamil Tigers relied on their sea lines of communication for supplies. The Sea Tigers only ever had a limited open ocean capability, far inferior to the Sri Lankan Navy, but sought to make up for it inshore with a range of innovative asymmetric capabilities, including explosive suicide boats, divers, semi-submersibles and crude submarines. These were built in clandestine jungle factories in LTTE held territory.

Throughout the conflict the LTTE published photographs and video of a range of capabilities for propaganda purposes. These often showed interesting and novel Sea Tiger craft. Additionally the Government showed off captured prizes and still displays an impressive array of Sea Tiger craft. Between these sources the internet is rich with imagery of Sea Tiger craft (especially if you search in local languages).

this whole site is a real treat – be sure to check out the page about narco subs as well

Granted that one of the purposes of history is to supply us with picturesque and instructive anecdotes, it must be insisted that this requirement cannot override the obligation on writers of history to keep to the truth. On the contrary, tales of the perfidy of fortune or the folly of princes are instructive precisely to the extent that they are true. In most branches of history, counsels of good sense along these lines have prevailed, and the public expects of its historians a certain complexity in their explanations and reasonably high standards of evidence. It is no longer possible to ascribe the course of events simply to the ambitions of great men or to class hatred, nor can anyone just repeat a story using as sole evidence the assertion of some previous historian. The examples above, though, make one wonder whether these laudable developments have taken place in the history of ideas, at least of the more popular kind. The subject is still a morass of colourful falsehoods and sectarian myths handed down from generation to generation with no more foundation in evidence than those genealogies whereby royal houses once sought to connect themselves with the heroes of Troy. And here I do not use “myth” in any technical sense, as some avant garde theologians are said to do, according to which a myth may be in some way essentially true. By “myth” I mean “lie”.

The tales about the medieval thinkers and Galileo are little lies. The big lie of which they are the foothills is the Renaissance.

We insist, then, that there is no promised land, no socialist Prester John waiting ready and hidden either in the icy winds of human political temporality or in the solar-hot chaos of urban intensity. Far from discouraging the unconditional accelerationist or beckoning her to the grim convent of asceticism, however, the ruins in which this realisation contemptuously leaves us are the terrain of a genuine, even, properly, horrific aesthetic freedom that is liberated from the totality of a one-directional political teleology. ‘Do what thou wilt’, since with human agency displaced, the world will route around our decisions, impressing itself precisely through our glittering fractionation. Taking the smallest steps beyond good and evil, the unconditional accelerationist, more than anyone else, is free at heart to pursue what she thinks is good and right and interesting—but with the ironical realisation that the primary ends that are served are not her own. For the unconditional accelerationist, the fastidious seriousness of the problem-solvers who propose to ‘save humanity’ is absurd in the face of the problems they confront. It can provoke only Olympian laughter. And so, ‘in its colder variants, which are those that win out, [accelerationism] tends to laugh.’

Whereas the new left are funded to be inherently toothless against power, the alt-right and neoreaction do it for free. The only significant difference is that they espouse a suite of neoliberal/ unsecure power liberties that are different to the new left’s. Whereas the new left pushes a horizontilaism and negative liberties based on the liberation of the individual’s racial and gender identity from formal authority, the alt right and neoreaction come at you from the angle of economics and law, calling for a liberation of the individual from economic complexity and formal control. Both sets in effect offer a suite of negative liberties which are intrinsically what someone once correctly labelled for me as primitivistic. Both espouse a rejection of organisational complexity, masking it with a referral to a mystical individual level spontaneous order which lacks any coherence and which has real affinity to the most extreme crass fideistic referrals to God as a cause for events. How does the economy work? Invisible hand. How do markets work? Competition is good. How does technology develop? Markets. How will society work if everyone is supplied negative liberties? Their natural goodness will come out. How will change occur? people will awaken spontaneously. Each time the discussion stops exactly where it is believed it supports anarchistic and primitivistic interpretations of events.

To offer any sort of threat to the neoliberal/ unsecure power system, a movement will need to be avowedly hegemonic. Either by developing alternative hegemonic institutions or converting the neoliberal/ unsecure power institutions into absolutist hegemonic institutions. We also need to reject negative liberties which are the basis of neoliberalism and the unsecure power system in favour of true liberty offered by an absolutist accelerationist state. A basic guide is supplied by the actions of Lee Kuan Yew and Deng Xiaoping and the other Asian developmental states of the mid-twentieth century. The west has nothing to offer intellectually except mindless neoliberal friendly destruction and autism in this regard.

The timing of the DoJ release was clearly premeditated to send a message to would be leakers that the long arm of the law moves fast. The implied narrative is that mere hours after the leaked document was released they had already collared the leaker. Additionally, the search warrant is worded to throw as much blame on The Intercept as possible. The truth is that Ms Winner was doomed, regardless of what The Intercept did to protect their source – which was, basically, nothing.

[…]

The DoJ affidavits and press release do a lot of heavy lifting to place as much blame as possible on The Intercept, but they had almost no material impact on the investigation. The language of the search warrant affidavit implies that The Intercept was not operating safely and essentially grassed up their source in the rush to get a scoop — apparently the Russians were involved in hacking during the 2016 US election (something that has been heavily reported on since June 2016…a year.)

The MSS unit with which Claiborne became involved was the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB). Largely unknown outside of the small group of people who look at Chinese intelligence operations, the SSSB has surfaced only a few times in public. In 2009, the SSSB raided the China offices of Australian mining firm Rio Tinto. The office director, Stern Hu, came under investigation, because his aggressive approach to investment cost the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises several hundred million dollars. A year later, the FBI arrested Glenn Duffie Shriver, who applied to work at the State Department and CIA in exchange for $70,000. The SSSB recruited Shriver in Shanghai when he responded to an essay contest on U.S.-China relations and encouraged him to take a position in the U.S. government.

The affidavit reveals that the SSSB can operate all over China and the world, not just in Shanghai. In communications with Claiborne, her SSSB contacts—identified only as Co-Conspirator B and Co-Conspirator C—offered to meet her in Beijing as well as any third country if and when she left the United States. Co-Conspirator B also made references to business trips in Italy and Africa.

be sure to check out the linked affidavit if spycraft interests you

The myth of progress may not yet be dead, but it is dying. In its place another myth has been growing up, a myth that has been promoted especially by the anarchoprimitivists, though it is widespread in other quarters as well. According to this myth, prior to the advent of civilization no one ever had to work, people just plucked their food from the trees and popped it into their mouths and spent the rest of their time playing ring-around-the-rosie with the flower children. Men and women were equal, there was no disease, no competition, no racism, sexism or homophobia, people lived in harmony with the animals and all was love, sharing and cooperation.

Admittedly, the foregoing is a caricature of the anarchoprimitivists’ vision. Most of them — I hope — are not quite as far out of touch with reality as that. They nevertheless are pretty far out of touch with it, and it’s high time for someone to debunk their myth. Because that is the purpose of this article, I will say little here about the positive aspects of primitive societies. I do want to make clear, however, that one can truthfully say about such societies a great deal that is positive. In other words, the anarchoprimitivist myth is not one hundred percent myth; it does include some elements of reality.

A more serious worry for psychological-continuity views is that you could be psychologically continuous with two past or future people at once. If your cerebrum—the upper part of the brain largely responsible for mental features—were transplanted, the recipient would be psychologically continuous with you by anyone’s lights (even though there would also be important psychological differences). The psychological-continuity view implies that she would be you. If we destroyed one of your cerebral hemispheres, the resulting being would also be psychologically continuous with you. (Hemispherectomy—even the removal of the left hemisphere, which controls speech—is considered a drastic but acceptable treatment for otherwise-inoperable brain tumors: see Rigterink 1980.) What if we did both at once, destroying one hemisphere and transplanting the other? Then too, the one who got the transplanted hemisphere would be psychologically continuous with you, and would be you according to the psychological-continuity view.

But now suppose that both hemispheres are transplanted, each into a different empty head. (We needn’t pretend, as some authors do, that the hemispheres are exactly alike.) The two recipients—call them Lefty and Righty—will each be psychologically continuous with you. The psychological-continuity view as we have stated it implies that any future being who is psychologically continuous with you must be you. It follows that you are Lefty and also that you are Righty. But that cannot be: if you and Lefty are one and you and Righty are one, Lefty and Righty cannot be two. And yet they are. To put the point another way, suppose Lefty is hungry at a time when Righty isn’t. If you are Lefty, you are hungry at that time. If you are Righty, you aren’t. If you are Lefty and Righty, you are both hungry and not hungry at once: a contradiction.

In dozens of articles posted over several years, Yahya demonstrated knowledge of classical Arabic—the notoriously difficult language of educated religious speech—and familiarity with Islamic sources and history. His Arabic was stunning even to Cerantonio, an extremely self-confident religious autodidact. Cerantonio told me that another Muslim in their internet discussion group had once challenged a theological point Yahya had made. “Then Yahya did something that shocked us all,” Cerantonio said. “He responded to the guy in traditional Arabic poetry that he devised off the top of his head, using the guy’s name in the poetry, explaining the situation, and answering his objections.” For any claim, it seemed, Yahya could instantly spout textual support, and confronted with any counterclaim, he could undercut the argument with a sweep of the leg.

[…]

The couple indulged, too, in their other shared passion: getting high. Islamic orthodoxy considers cannabis an intoxicant, and therefore forbidden. But Yahya’s practice of Islam was unconventional even then. In a historical essay titled “Cannabis,” heavily footnoted with classical Arabic sources, he made the Islamic case for pot. There was evidence, he wrote, that early Islamic leaders had taxed hemp seeds. Since Muslims generally cannot tax forbidden substances, such as pork or alcohol, Yahya reasoned, they must have considered pot permissible. As for psilocybin: Yahya cited an obscure hadith (a report of the sayings and actions of Muhammad) that he said described Muhammad’s having descended from a mountain after meditation and extolling the medicinal properties of mushrooms—particularly as a cure for diseases of the eye. Yahya and Tania took this to mean that God had sanctioned the ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms. So the young lovers blissed out under the Texas sky, shrooming after the example of the prophet himself.

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one,” says Cioran. Nihilism is the first step in an active annihilation not of reality, but of the human illusions of reality; and of humanity itself as a primal illusion, one that must be rendered null and void. Karl Marx himself would say “religion in itself is without content, it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will collapse of itself.” (Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge In Dresden (1842)) With the death and murder of the gods, and God, we began that slow and methodical destruction of the illusions that have bound us in a cage of madness for millennia. Yet, this step into freedom was captured and turned against us, an act at once of enslavement and total evisceration, a systematic unveiling of an order of obstinate sociopathy, a recursion to a formalism of a voidic disaggregation enclosing us in a a non-time, a present without outlet; a static conveyance that has no other goal than its own continuance: an aberration of the death-flows it seeks to evade, a cage for the desires that it seeks to bind from the inherent movement of death. Civilization is this system: capitalism is its engine, an alien form of life that has no inherent objective other than annihilation.

“We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.” – Emile Cioran Ours is a culture of the excrescence of death, a thanatopic pursuit not of profit but of total annihilation. The principle of deregulation inherent in global capitalism is indistinguishable from the total acceleration of a deterritorialized, systematic and efficient cannibalism (one that seeks to incorporate every last niche of biopower within a machinic phylum) – and a civilization of machinic and technocratic infestation from which there is no reprieve. The question is whether one accepts the truth of this and joins the comedy of destruction and implosion (helps it along, gives it a push), or whether one spends one’s time in the factories of oblivion, illusory worlds of decaying narratives of disorder and madness spinning out of control, reversions to outworn heresies of a bankrupt and decadent ethno-apocalypse by way of irony and fake solutions.

Where does this get us? From the perspective of early 20th century rationalists: global commerce and dazzling new technologies vs. peasants who insisted on setting their own crops on fire for a bizarre religious ritual. That’s not hyperbole, by the way, that’s an example from the book. The rationalists were maybe aware that they had spotty or incomplete data on growing practices, but the data they did have was quantified and supported by labs, whereas the villagers couldn’t explain their practice using any kind of data. The peasants, it turns out, were right, but would you have guessed that? More importantly: would you guess that now?

The only way that I can see that one would is if there’s a genuine admission of ignorance on the part of the “scientists”. Even reconsidering one’s position requires some kind of counter-argument, and the problem here is that the counter-argument doesn’t make sense in the language of the scientists. Indeed – a solid counterargument requires some kind of power (you’re not going to listen to some random guy on the street screaming about [whatever]), but legibility inherently reduces that power.

A common takeaway from Seeing Like a State is “reality is a lot more complex than the state simplifications”. And that is extremely true. But I think the far more interesting, under-discussed, and disturbing takeaway is about mutual incomprehensibility. Note that this part is still quite relevant. Even in a democracy where the citizens have a voice – and let’s say that politicians actually listen – the way they explain things will not make sense to outsiders. This limits their ability to counteract a given proposition.

a review of james scott’s seminal seeing like a state – i only found this blog yesterday but i can tell it’s going to be one of my favorites. his writing also reminds me of both scott alexander and the last psychiatrist, if you’re a fan of either (both, i hope!)

misc

  • Rationality: From AI to Zombies – yudkowsky’s sequences, which i haven’t read but may now that this nice site is an option

  • welder – “Welder allows you to set up a Linux server with plain shell scripts.”

  • StatiCrypt – “Based on the crypto-js library, StatiCrypt uses AES-256 to encrypt your string with your passphrase in your browser (client side). Download your encrypted string in a HTML page with a password prompt you can upload anywhere”

  • ゆざめレーベル - yuzame label – a japanese netlabel i’ve just discovered (with free dl’s natch)