I feel like maybe the whole world is going to be getting some good news soon—I've wanted to believe in #hope, and I'm starting to feel it more often. soon, I hope, the Pnictogen Wing will have important things to do than kick @NateSilver538 or @elonmusk around in public.
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I feel moved to thank some particular people. probably a LOT of people. thousands, millions! I'm not sure where to start.
my family here in Seattle—Daria, Gravislizard, @KaylinEvergreen, and all the pretty cats and reptiles of the Bramble House—they've been so patient.
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they've had to put up with *years* of us being Too Much™, especially online; now it looks like it might have finally paid off and hopefully this means working on the garden and being more useful around the house.
I thank my longer-distance family, too. there's many.
see, I start naming people and immediately I fret about leaving folks out, so it's hard to keep going. I love all the people I talk to and try to keep in touch with, and I feel like I don't do a good job of keeping in touch. I'll be working on that!
~Chara of Pnictogen
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I owe @KaylinEvergreen and Dionysos, one of my absolute _favorite_ Hellenic deities, a bit of attention. so here it is!
Dionysos, or "Bacchus" as he's been called in Greece and Rome, is an unusual addition to the Hellenic pantheon—a late addition, thought to be imported.
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his own mythology seems to reflect the likelihood that the worship of Dionysos came in from the East: the general story is that he was born in Thrace, had a long period of wandering abroad, then returned to Greece—triumphantly drunk off his arse.
for Dionysos was a god of drunken revels and *ecstasy*.
that's how I first learned about him from Euripedes's stark play "The Bacchae", which describes how the king of Thebes, Pentheus, falls foul of Dionysos by attempting to forbid his worship.
there's a *lie* that #CSLewis told about himself in public, frequently. there were a lot of lies that he told about himself in public—not _malicious_ lies, but still lies.
this is something that Western society has trouble with: grasping that lies need not be malicious.
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if you say something factually incorrect, you're a *liar*, even if you believe the lies to be truths. @MattWalshBlog or @realchrisrufo BELIEVE their propaganda lies about trans people, and they double and treble and quadruple down on believing them, when challenged, but...
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...that's exactly why they're fanatics, and why their lies ought not to be taken at face value: @MattWalshBlog &c. aren't able to withstand criticism of their propaganda. if they're called out for telling lies, they tell more of them, and more loudly. this is *fanaticism*.
the Pnictogen Wing has a hypothesis about @elonmusk's decision to ruin the public @Twitter API—it's not a hypothesis we've too much confidence in, but still we offer it: we think ONE of the purposes of doing this was to make Musk's own Twitter activities harder to analyze.
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yes, there's lots of other reasons that the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @GOP#Twitter fash gang would have for destroying the ability of outsiders to write Twitter applications. the fash crowd themselves make heavy use of bots, sock-puppet accounts, and other Twitter trickery.
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and of course there's also the fact that @elonmusk's been destroying @Twitter's ability to make money, long-term. he's in "vulture capitalist" mode—squeezing as much short-term money as he can from his own cultish #Twitter fandom before he finally auctions off the corpse.
there's a very vague idea for a thread I've been chasing around my head all day. let me see if I can tease it out. I'll tell you the starting point: the writing of Mr. William Gibson (@GreatDismal) and his oft-quoted sentiment that the very rich aren't remotely human.
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that quote still *bothers* me. I've admitted this before (to Mr. @GreatDismal, even)—I have an immense inward aversion to thinking about anyone like that. even Elon Musk, grotesque as he is...I've tried over and over to find some trace of healthful human emotions in him.
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it's taken me a long time to come to grips with what separates someone like @elonmusk (and this maybe goes for his fanclub too—@mtaibbi, @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, whoever) from someone like me. and it's not the *money* and *privilege* and *success* I'm thinking about.
one thing that right-wing people (like @NateSilver538) don't quite get about being "right wing": whatever these people *call* themselves, however they choose to label themselves, in reality they're as *right wing* as their most extreme right-wing beliefs, firmly held.
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@NateSilver538 endorses the racist conspiracy approach to the #COVID19 crisis, i.e. "permit millions to die while blaming it all on China", and that's a *far right wing* belief. it doesn't matter what ELSE Nate Silver thinks he believes—it's not likely he even quite knows.
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(sadly, one can't assume that someone like @NateSilver538 is ever in possession of very much self-awareness. he lies to everyone, *especially* himself.)
even if Nate Silver has some vaguely liberal or leftist ideas, they're bound to wither and disappear over time.
purity is the obsession of bigots, who define themselves as perfect and hence demand perfection in others.
one sees that arrogance constantly in the behavior of bigots like @NateSilver538 and @Cernovich. they act like nothing matters more than their approval.
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Christians habitually have been obsessed with purity and perfection, which they only ever find in things they can't really see. there's a kind of diffuse Gnostic fallacy that pervades Christianity—a belief that there's something intrinsically sinful about *matter itself*.
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I value many of the insights of Gnostic Christians but I don't agree with that one—I can't make myself think of the physics and chemistry of the Cosmos as somehow *broken*. if the Gnostics are right, and the work of the Demiurge is flawed...I don't blame the *materials*.