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Thales of Florida Profile picture
Thales of Florida
@FloridaThales
If Sonny Crockett had been a DJ.
fche Profile picture 1 subscribed
Apr 4 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1/ Thales Rant.

If you're a straight white Christian male, you get to deal with something I'm calling "Cultural Tinnitus."

It's a constant cultural buzzing of "YOU SUCK" amplified across popular channels 24/7. 2/ Turn on the TV? Many TV shows, commercials, etc. will show you as a buffoon who drives his car up a tree, or a lovable mistaken dumb racist who can be redeemed, or the big bad.

Whatever.
Feb 22 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
1/ She isn't materially bad off. She has nice clothes, her makeup is on point (near as I can tell). She's in a car with a moon roof. She doesn't look like she's starving or lacking in necessities.

It's status that has become the truly expensive thing here. Not material concerns. 2/ There is probably a house she could afford. It might be small and outdated, and in some town or city she doesn't want to live in.

But her friends would make fun of her for that. She wouldn't feel like it granted her status in life. She'd still be "poor".
Jul 18, 2023 • 39 tweets • 9 min read
The Early Palaeologan Period - Byzantium's last gasp as a regional power.

1. After the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, there was a period where, though it never became the superpower of the eastern Med. again, it did act something like a Great Power for a time. Image 2. It begins with the restoration of Constantinople, which was was kind of an accident. Michael VIII had had sieged the city off and on since the battle of Pelagonia in 1259. But didn't have the troops to take it by storm, unlike the Ottomans two centuries later.
Jun 23, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
What amazes me sometimes is how near to destruction even the survivors were.

The Archimedes Palimpsest is an insane example. Only existing as paper theoretically cleaned up and reused - and then somebody figured out what was written under it... Another example was when somebody found The Secret History in the Vatican archives in the 1600s, and nobody even remembered how it got there. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Jun 23, 2023 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
1. Manuel Komnenos's reign was the last time the Byzantine Empire could be called the superpower of the Mediterranean.

The rapid collapse after his death shows just how dependent the late empire had become on vigorous personalities on the throne. 2. He achieved deference from Jerusalem to Italy. For the last time, the empire was on the offensive on all frontiers - Manuel had, perhaps, the firmest grip on the Balkans anyone would be able to claim since the Principate.
Jun 21, 2023 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
1. I'd like to thread this out, even though it shows me in a bad light.

Because I think a lot of you have witnessed me kind of losing my shit over this particular thing, and I'd like to explain it.

Definitions are HARD. https://t.co/CLo1rYmnX1twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
2. The horse/chair problem is a fun exercise in the difficulty of definitions. We all know what a chair is to reasonable levels of agreement, probably.

And yet defining it strictly results in absurdities.

Jun 21, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence is losing money, so be it." "Free speech isn't free."

People who said that back when implied soldiers should die in some foreign toilet to defend our rights.

But when I read it, I think that honesty is expensive. It can cost lots of money, because people don't want to hear it, often times.
Jun 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1. Test scores and GPA measure two different things, although there is some correlation.

The tests are closer to IQ or g.

GPA is more about conscientiousness (though to get a high GPA in tough classes, g is also needed). 2. Some white collar jobs have a greater need for conscientiousness than intelligence. But these are areas ripe for replacement by AI, eventually.

There's also a place for the intelligent, but not conscientious. Many firms have a disorganized "Wizard in the Basement" guy.
Jun 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm reminded of an old housing tier list:

Tier 1: Shared bedroom/bunk
Tier 2: Private bedroom w/roommates
Tier 3: Apartment/Condo, but people above and/or below you
Tier 4: Townhouse, nobody above or below, but shared walls
Tier 5: Yardless detached house, minimal setback Tier 6: Suburban house with small lot
Tier 7: Suburban house with large lot
Tier 8: Rural house with acreage
Tier 9: Rural house with more than 1/2 mile to next home
Tier 10: House so far from others you would have to drive a non-trivial distance to even see another human being
Jun 19, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
This taboo is so intense. How did we get here?

1. I remember a story kids told each other on the playground where I grew up. It was called "Blue Love".

In it, a child hears someone mention "Blue Love" and asks his parents what it is.

They immediately disown him... 2. The child is sent to an orphanage without explanation. His parents were furious and screamed and cried all the way there, but never told him what Blue Love meant.

Years later at the orphanage he asked the headmistress why his parents disowned him for that.
Jun 19, 2023 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
1. Attached garages are less aesthetic, yes.

But they are not a waste of resources, and like many things common in suburbia, represent a compromise dictated by limited resources.

(I like @EvilVizier so please be respectful in the replies). 2. Garages function as a general use space that can be used to store cars, or sometimes other vehicles like small boats, jetskis, etc. They are also useful as workshops, general storage in places where there are no basements (Florida), ad hoc home gyms, etc.
Jun 19, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
1. As much as "laddishness" as a culture is - at least from our point of view - retarded (along with its living descendant - bordererism), there's something to be said for a culture being rather clear about what it expects of you.

The modern West adheres to scoldishness. 2. Scoldishness is a very high school lit teacher kind of energy. Whatever your achievements, you are never above scolding. New ways of scolding are invented, should you manage to evade existing methods.

There is no escape from it.
May 3, 2023 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
1. Taboos are a big part of Western decline.

Many truths cannot be spoken publicly, they can only be whispered among friends, and even then with some measure of worry and suspicion.

Penalties for wrongthink are often ruinous socially and financially. Image 2. Smug adherents of political orthodoxy like to taunt their enemies. Come out, they will say, and face the judgment of popular culture under your own name. Make destroying you easier for them. Image
Mar 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Many Disney stories are inversions like this one.

In the original Little Mermaid, the lovestruck teenager dies. The happy ending defeats the warning.

The Lion King is a loose inversion of Hamlet, except the happy ending defeats the purpose. 2/ Many old children's tales and fables are cautionary. Don't do this, or you might get eaten by the evil witch.

They teach that the world can be dangerous, and you should learn to be wary. Don't be foolish and rely on easy emotions.
Mar 28, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/ Maybe a hot take: the press elected Trump in 2016.

Trump was a great example of the anti-fragility concept, with regard to the press.

He didn't merely weather negative press, he thrived on it. He gained from it. The more the press attacked, the stronger he became. 2/ But this exposes a weakness: Trump loses if the press just ignores him. They couldn't do it in 2016, they didn't have the self control. They hated him too much.

Indifference is Trump's Achilles Heel.
Mar 28, 2023 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
1/ I want to do a thread on this. Every decade or two, the neural palette base of home interiors swaps.

Beige... gray/white... beige...

It's stupid, and comes about because people are fucking basic and either afraid to step outside the box, or do it badly but boldly. 2/ Color design for a home or building (interior or exterior) is very simple. You choose a neutral base color. A beige, a gray, or a white.

And your selection of this base color informs the other choices. If you go beige, then you want more warm colors. Gray/white? Cool colors.
Mar 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1/ The claim is partly correct. It depends on the periods you are comparing.

First of all, you must adjust for inflation. And of course, square footage. The best stat I could find for this is inflation adjusted price per square foot for new homes, 1978 - 2020. 2/ See the graph below.

Granted, this only goes to 2020, and prices continued to rise through 2022.

And we would currently be in the highest point on this chart. So in that sense, OP is correct.
Jun 10, 2020 • 47 tweets • 9 min read
Today's Byzantine History Thread (by poll voting): The Catalan Company.

The Catalan Company was a group of almogavar veterans from the war of Sicilian Vespers (a war ironically funded in part by the Byzantines) under Roger de Flor, hired by Andronikos II to restore W. Anatolia. Image 2/ Now first some background into why the situation in W. Anatolia was so desperate. As the various Turkish beyliks encroached on Byzantine territory - something Michael VIII kinda-sorta ignored (because busy focusing on his european holdings), W. Anatolia began to collapse.