Tag: stupid

Riots don’t achieve anything

all your commentary about riots is bullshit and confused and tendentious and fuck off. Politically motivated riots are a form of altruistic punishment. Altruistic punishment is behavior that imposes costs on third parties with no benefit to the punisher, often even at great cost to the punisher. To the idiot economist, it is a lose/lose situation, such a puzzle. For the record, I’m a fan of the phenomenon

Food Woo

We need another Enlightenment to overcome all this superstitious nonsense.

Vani Hari, a.k.a. the Food Babe, has amassed a loyal following. Hari implores her soldiers to petition food companies to change their formulas. She’s also written a bestselling book telling you that you can change your life in 21 days by “breaking free of the hidden toxins in your life.” She and her army are out to change the world.

She’s also utterly full of shit.

The rise of fake engine noise

this is so dumb, but how else can you be sure you’re compensating properly for your penis? reminds me of Rolling coal

Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks. Without them, today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away.

Existential insecurity

Atrocious acts like this, just like blasphemy laws, come out of existential insecurity, and are unworthy of civilization.

The powerful must never be immune from mockery. If there is one thing which the past several 100 years have taught us, this is it: power which is not subject to examination, to criticism, to the salutary effects of lèse-majesté, is the greatest factory of tyranny that the world has ever known.

It is particularly ironic that the men who perpetrated today’s massacre in Paris were angry over satirical depictions of Muhammad, because in doing so they have forgotten the exact reason why his depiction was forbidden: because the depiction of animals or of people encourages idolatry. Islam has always been profoundly careful to avoid even the slightest suggestion of veneration of anything other than God: even the time for the mid-day prayer begins just after the Sun has passed its zenith, to avoid the appearance of Sun worship. The purpose of the hadith is to prevent people from worshipping the Prophet, not to put the Prophet on a par with God.

No, the reason for this had nothing to do with holy writ, and everything to do with people who want the right to declare that they may not be insulted, that their pride has more value than human life. And any claim which can be enforced with bloodshed is a claim which comes from power — and thus a claim which itself has no claim on immunity from mockery. Because they demand it must not be spoken, and because they wish to prevent it from being spoken by creating a fear of murder among anyone who speaks out, it must therefore be spoken.

In the spirit of this, here are several of the cartoons which Charlie Hebdo published which brought down this rage. As its cover I present the best possible summary of all: a picture of Muhammad, saying “It’s hard to be loved by assholes.”

Eurotechnopanic

I wrote a 3000-word essay about Eurotechnopanic — or, Google and the German Problem — that just appeared on Zeit Online. A small backstory:

Zeit is my favorite German publication by far. But I did first approach the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with this piece because the paper has been at the forefront of Germany’s antitechnology movement and I thought they would welcome discussion … and also because the FAZ had published an 8000-word attack on me and I figured 3000 words was a downpayment on equal time. But the FAZ refused to publish it.

So I went to my favorite newspaper, Die Zeit, and its online editor-in-chief, Jochen Wegner, agreed immediately to publish it. I’m honored to be there. These are important issues in Europe that require more balanced discussion.

Here is the start of the essay in English:

I worry about Germany and technology. I fear that protectionism from institutions that have been threatened by the internet — mainly media giants and government — and the perception of a rising tide of technopanic in the culture will lead to bad law, unnecessary regulation, dangerous precedents, and a hostile environment that will make technologists, investors, and partners wary of investing and working in Germany.

I worry, too, about Europe and technology. Germany’s antiprogress movement is spreading to the EU — see its court’s decision creating a so-called right to be forgotten — as well as to members of the EU — see Spain’s link tax.

I worry mostly about damage to the internet, its freedoms and its future, limiting the opportunities an open net presents to anyone anywhere. 3 forces are at work endangering the net: control, protectionism, and technopanic.